How do you extract caffeine from a drink?
Posted by Caffe | Posted in Chemistry | Posted on 27-09-2009
Tagged Under : Coffee Tea, Energy Drinks, Science Experiment
Rupert asked:
I have to do a science experiment for school, and was wondering is it possible to extract caffeine from drinks such as coffee, tea and energy drinks.
I have to do a science experiment for school, and was wondering is it possible to extract caffeine from drinks such as coffee, tea and energy drinks.
yes try thin layer chromatography
search it on wikipedia/yahoo answer and u will see what its all about
the down side is u cant tell the exact amount of caffeien but u can say it lies b/n two fixed values and so on ask ur teacher for more info or contact me i might have somethings to share from my home works
I think using an organic solvent like Dichloromethane should work. Take the tea or coffee and add it to the organic solvent, shake vigorously to emulsify the solution, the caffeine has a higher solubility in the organic solvent than the aqueous. Separate the two layers, then allow it to recrystallize and then filter via vacuum filtration.
TLC would work qualitatively, but I think you’re wanting a quantitative measure, n’est pas?
You will need to evaporate the energy drink and use the coffee beans or tea leaves for this experiment. If you have the liquids, boil and evaporate to dryness and extract with dichloromethane.
In the industrial process, caffeine is extracted with supercritical carbon dioxide, but you will have no chance to apply it to your science project.
You would need to use a fairly large volume of coffee or whatever drink you’re going to try, as caffeine is not present in large quantities. Roughly 1 litre of strong espresso will yield about 1g of caffeine, Red Bull and similar enery drinks are significally lower (about 0.3 g per litre) and regular Coke is virtually nothing (about 0.1 g per litre).
In the absence of super critical CO2, which is by far the simplest way to extract, you can use activated carbon, provided you can identify the best grade (an activated carbon manufacturer should be able to help), and provided you have a method of removing the caffeine from the carbon pack!
Alternatively, shaking the drink with ethyl acetate and then evaporating off the ethyl acetate to leave the caffeine may work.