Design and Construction of Compact Voltaic Cell to Perform Electrochemical Analysis

Abstract

Conventional Voltaic cells are characterized as cumbersome setup to handle, with fragile open ended glassware, tubes, troughs or tanks which are prone to interference and contamination. In this study, design was made to construct compact, durable and portable unit of Voltaic cell. Compactability tests show that the designed and constructed Voltaic cell is a compact unit. Conventional and the constructed (compact) Voltaic cell were separately used to perform potentiometry with various concentrations of electrolytes. Relationship between concentration of stock and standard solutions (mol L-1) of CuSO4.7H2O and 1.0 M ZnSO4.7H2O and potential difference (Volts) generated  were determined at the range of 1.0 mol L-1 to  4.0 mol L-1  of the electrolytes: conventional Voltaic cell measured 0.05 Volts to 0.11 Volts while Compact Voltaic cell measured 0.08 Volts to 0.14 Volts respectively. Statistical comparison of conventional and compact Voltaic cells at 95.0% percent confidence level indicated a significant difference in their performance. However at 99.0% - 99.9% confidence level the comparison showed that there is no significant difference in their performance. The results of this study showed that Perspex is a good material for constructing compact, durable and portable Voltaic cells. The compact Voltaic cell is a highly sensitive tools as revealed by its ability to measure higher potential difference than the conventional cell; that concentration of electrolytes and potential difference have a positive correlation: as the concentration increases, the potential difference increases in the Voltaic cell; and statistical analysis of data obtained from the conventional and compact Voltaic cells revealed that the two sets of methods do not agree significantly with each other at 95.00% confidence level.