Eddie Newton

Goodbye To All This Pt.6

Say hello to Karl!

This is the Karl Fisher machine. Probably the most used piece of equipment in the lab.

The machine detects the amount of water present in a sample by biopotentiometric analysis. It's quite simple really. The sample is dissolved in an alcohol, methanol in this case, the anode is immersed in this solution, as the analyte is titrated in, the electrical current changes. At to the equivalence point there is a sudden change of voltage detected by the anode, and from the amount of l2 consumed can be used to calculate the amount of H2O in the sample, because as every schoolboy/girl knows .. one mole of l2 is consumed for every one mole of H2O!

And if you believe I knew all that without referring to Wikipedia then you will believe anything!

So why is this entry called Eddie Newton I hear you ask?

Back in the days when I started, the company was expanding quite quickly and taking on new staff left right and centre. Some of the boys who had been working there would send the new boys up to the lab for a water a content test. But they would tell them to ask if we could do an Eddie Newton on it instead of a Karl Fisher!

It was one of those rite of passage people get in a new job sometimes. You know the type of thing, pop over the stores and ask them for a left handed hammer, that kind of thing. You lot must have some of those stories, let's here them in the comments below!