Terry:

You have touched on a personal sensitive spot, that of relating "real" or
actual cleaning capacity, (or stripping capacity, or functionality in
general) to some measurement, like pH or titre.  The chemical vendors are
notoriously lax in doing things like this.

We are all too familiar with the fact that a fresh cleaner solution at
concentration X, usually works better than a very old cleaner solution at
concentration 2X.  This is because the monitor of concentration (usually the
titre) is not really monitoring the critical active component(s).

Because of the fact that the pH scale is logrithmic (where is spell check?),
pH is usually a better check, or monitor of activity, than titre, as long as
the pH falls within the range 2-12.  Outside of that concentration and pH are
not real closely related.  Incidently, the reason why pH is a better measure
than titre, is that it measures active, or available alkalinity, not total
alkalinity.

In some cases, and I suspect this is especially the case in saponifiers, the
chelation capacity may be the key to the performance of the product, in which
case monitoring the dissolved metal level may be the best way to measure the
performance.

At the end of the day, it is the suppliers responsibility to help you on this
sort of matter, lean on them.

Rudy Sedlak
RD Chemical Company