Aspirin And Acetaminophen

In order to extract aspirin, caffeine, and acetaminophen from a tablet of pain medication acid and base extraction techniques were used to exploit the differences in solubility between the components. This is achieved by using a separatory funnel and three different solvents, 4M HCl which separated the caffeine, deionized water which separated the acetaminophen, and 5% wt/vol NaHCO3 which separated the aspirin. Once the solution of the crushed tablet and ethyl acetate was mixed with a solvent in the funnel two immiscible layers will form. In the case of the aspirin separation, the carboxylic component will be attracted to the basic NaHCO3 layer, effectively separating it from the other components. This is the same with the other components and their corresponding solvents. The …show more content…
To purify acetaminophen and caffeine another separation was performed and a drying agent (MgSO4) was added to all three. Aspirin was also isolated to calculate what percent of the aspirin was yielded. The results of the experiment showed successful extraction of all three components. None of the purified extractions showed signs of impurities and matched very close to the standards, in terms of Rf values. The extracted and purified acetaminophen had the exact same Rf value of 0.543 as the standard. The purified aspirin had the same Rf value of 0.782 as the standard. Purified caffeine was slightly off of the standard with an experimental Rf of 0.347 and a standard Rf of 0.304. The theoretical yield of aspirin was 92 % indicating a very efficient extraction of the aspirin. The spots for the mixture containing all three showed Rf values of 0.320, 0.520, 0.717, corresponding to aspirin, caffeine, and acetaminophen respectively. Although they slightly differ from the purified sample’s Rf values this clearly shows all three components, as it should. The mixture containing just acetaminophen and caffeine had Rf values of 0.304 and 0.47