The Quest to Eliminate the Use of Lead in the Laboratory : Part 1

A solution to the problem of eliminating the use of toxic reagents in the laboratories of the South African sugar industry has been sought for some time. This paper contains the results of an investigation to replace basic lead acetate as a clarification agent in the determination of pol by substituting it with a mixture of aluminium chloride and calcium hydroxide. This mixture achieves good clarification but poor decolourisation and so some darkly coloured products have to be diluted more than when using lead. The pol values of products clarified with aluminium tend to be lower than those in which lead is used but the ratio of the lead pol to the aluminium pol is fairly consistent for all factory products, although this ratio varies slightly from factory to factory.