The hydrolysis and precipitation of Pd(II) in 0.6 mol kg−1 NaCl: A potentiometric, spectrophotometric, and EXAFS study

The soluble and insoluble hydrolysis products of palladium were investigated in aqueous solutions of 0.6 mol kg−1 NaCl at 298.2 K. Potentiometric titrations of millimolal palladium(II) solutions were used to monitor hydrolysis reactions of the mononuclear PdCl3OH2− and PdCl2OH22- species. Spectrophotometric titrations were also used to corroborate the speciation change and to extract the correlative molar absorption coefficients for the PdCl3OH2− species in the 210–320 nm range. Longer-term potentiometric titrations systematically yielded precipitates which matured over a period of 6 weeks and resulted in a more extensive release of protons to the solution. Precipitation experiments in the 3–11 pH range showed the dominant precipitating phase to be Pd(OH)1.72Cl0.28. EXAFS measurements yielded an average of 3.50 O and 0.50 Cl atoms per Pd atom with a Pd–O distance of 2.012 Å and a Pd–Cl distance of 2.185 Å. Speciation modeling of proton and palladium mass balance data of experiments for palladium concentrations ranging from 0.047 to 10.0  mmol kg−1 required the presence of polynuclear complexes containing 3–9 palladium atoms. The existence of such complexes is moreover supported by previous investigations of palladium hydroxide chains of the type [Pd(OH)1.72Cl0.28]n, that are coiled and/or aggregated into nanometer-sized (15–40 Å) spheroids.