Isolation Of Caffeine Lab Report

Caffeine is found in many products such as in pharmaceutical supplements, and beverages. Caffeine is mainly obtained from plant seeds or tea leaves. Extraction of caffeine is done to make decaffeinated coffee. There are three methods used to extract caffeine such as water extraction, supercritical carbon dioxide extraction and extraction by organic solvents. For this lab, the method used to extract caffeine will be by organic solvents. The purpose of the procedure is see how caffeine is isolated from a bag of tea. Procedure:
Each group was given a tea bag to boil in 100 milliliters of water. Before boiling the tea bag, the tea bag was placed in a 250 milliliters Erlenmeyer flask and 0.3 grams of sodium carbonate was added in. Sodium carbonate prevents caffeine from …show more content…
The solution was boiled for about 20 minutes. After, the tea bag boiled for a sufficient amount of time, it was carefully removed from the hot plate and left to cool down to room temperature. When the aqueous solution was cooled, one milliliter of saturated sodium chloride was added. By adding saturated sodium chloride, it attracts any water compounds that might react with caffeine. After sodium chloride was mixed in, 25 milliliters of ethyl acetate was used to separate the caffeine from the organic layer. Ethyl acetate is a polar compound that is used to attracted caffeine from tea leaves or coffee beans. Because caffeine is polar, it easily attracts to ethyl acetate. As two layers became visible, the top layer containing the caffeine and the bottom one the organic layer, the top layer was removed by a pipet. The solution that contained the caffeine was place in a clean 150 milliliter beaker. Before transferring the solution into the beaker, the beaker was weighted. A second potion of ethyl acetate was added to separate any remaining caffeine. After all the aqueous layer has been removed from the organic layer, a fair amount of anhydrous sodium sulfate was mixed in the