Determination of acidity constants of perfluoroalkanoic acids

Acidity constants (K-a) of perfluoroalkanoic acids were determined by pH titration and by electric conductivity for shorter alkanoic acids (C1 to C5) with 1 to 5 carbon atoms in the alkyl chain. The acidity constants obtained by the two methods are in good agreement. They increase from C1 (ethanoic) to C3 (butanoic acid) and then decrease from C3 to C5 (hexanoic acid) with increasing alkyl chain length. An abrupt decrease in the K-a value for the C5 acid occurred; the attempt to explain this in terms of viscosity of the solutions did not succeeded. The decrease in the K-a values with increasing alkyl chain length was substantiated by the values for C9 (decanoic) to C11 (dodecanoic) acids, which were determined from the solubility change with the solution pH. For the intermediate alkanoic acids (C6 to C8), the K-a values could not be determined precisely by these methods due to the extreme difficulty in separating the colloidal acid particles from the aqueous phase, because the particles have an emulsifying action of their own.