In lab, a sample of crude caffeine was purified using the technique of sublimation. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) was used to verify the caffeine's chemical structure and purity. Sublimation played a huge role in the purification of the crude caffeine. The process of sublimation is to take a chemical and change it from a solid phase directly into a vapor. Another reason as to why sublimation was used is because the caffeine can be separated from its contaminant due to the fact that it does not sublimate or it sublimates at a higher temperature than caffeine. We believed that since the caffeine came directly from tea leaves, that the contaminate was chlorophyll. The chlorophyll would also be the reason that the crude caffeine product had
