Boric acid, being a weak acid with an acidity constant of Ka1 5.75·10-10, is difficult to titrate. To enable easy titration, polyalcohols, e.g., mannitol, need to be added to the boric acid, leading to the formation of complexes with a greater acidic strength that behave like a monovalent acid which can be titrated with a NaOH solution.
If boric acid is to be titrated manually, this complexation involves a great deal of work and requires exact pipetting of the sample, distilled water, and mannitol solution in order to yield accurate results. Automated titration is therefore certainly the better choice.
Metrohm offers a fully automated system for boric acid analysis.
> Learn more about the Robotic Acid Analyzer