Determining if lithium acetate is anhydrate or dihydrate

I'm interested in trying a new gel electrophoresis buffer using lithium acetate. Before making a financial commitment, someone was able to provide me with enough lithium acetate from a different lab to try the buffer first. Lithium acetate is produced in both anhydrate and dihydrate form. The problem is that this batch was provided to me in a conical tube without any of the original product info, and the person didn't pay attention to this particular detail when taking it out of the original container. For annoying reasons beyond my control (nothing unethical or illegal), getting this info directly is taking a long time. I want to move forward with my work, and getting the molarity correct for the buffer is important, so I'm looking for options to determine which form it is. From what I can tell, the dihydrate form has a melting point of 54-56C, while the anyhydrate form has a melting point of 283-285C. So I was thinking that throwing it in an oven at 65C should give me my answer. Before trying it, though, is there any reason why this might be a bad idea, or just not work? Is there an easier approach?




Since no one else has formally submitted an answer, here goes. I ended up finally getting confirmation that the original container is labelled as dihydrate, so the original question is moot at this point. With that said, I think Mathew Mahindaratne's comment to do a tritation using a standard solution of HCl should be the answer, in part because it can be done with fairly basic equipment. This is relevant for me because I work primarily with DNA, so I don't have access to a lot of specialized chemistry equipment outside of that scope of work.


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