After boiling the mixture of sugar and Fehling’s solution for 2 min
before addition of the indicator, it was found to be red or orange - red owing to the presence
of coagulated copper(1) oxide. When the reaction mixture of sugar and Fehling’s solution
was boiled for 5 min before addition of the indicator, the copper(1) oxide settled at the bottom
of the flask, leaving a clear solution.
The end-point in the published method was given by the appearance
of a bright red or orange colour, but when a clear solution was produced after boiling for
5 min, it was found possible to see the last trace of the blue colour of the indicator and a
colourless end-point was obtained.
Efect of indicator concentration. When a clear reaction mixture was produced only 1
drop of 0.1% methylene blue solution was required in order to give a distinct blue colour,
thus giving a sharp colour change at the end-point. This also eliminates any errors resulting
from the use of a high concentration (3-5 drops of a 1% solution of methylene blue) as
methylene blue itself oxidises some sugar or those errors caused by the back-oxidation of
methylene white to methylene blue.
During the addition of the sugar solution to the boiling reaction mixture
it has been found useful to allow some time for completion of the reaction and observation
of the colour after the addition of each drop, and increasing this time from 1 to 3 min avoids
errors caused by the addition of excess of the sugar solution.
The use of a 200-ml Erlenmeyer flask in place of
a 300- or 400-ml flask improves the detection of the end-point as the height of the liquid
layer is greater in the smaller flask.
Fehling’s solution. Fehling’s solution was allowed to stand overnight and was then used
without filtration through treated asbestos.14 The tedious process of filtering the solutions
through treated asbestos has been found to be unnecessary, as shown in Table I.
A series of experiments was performed with standard solutions of invert sugar, glucose,
fructose and lactose of different concentrations using 5 or 10 ml each of Fehling’s solutions
A and B as in the procedure described belovv.