Aim: Isolation of caffeine from tea.

Procedure: 1) Take an Erlenmeyer flask to it add 25g of tea leaves or 10 tea bags and 20 g of sodium carbonate. To this add 225 mL of boiling water. 2) Allow the mixture to stand for 7 mins and then decant the solution into another Erlenmeyer flask. 3) To the Erlenmeyer flask containing hot tea leaves or tea bag add another 50 mL of hot boiling water. And immediately decant the liquid into the Erlenmeyer flask containing first extract. 4) Cool the extracts collected to the room temperature. 5) Take the extract into the separating funnel and extract the aqueous solution with 30 mL of dichloromethane twice. Note: Care should be taken that separating funnel should not be shaken very vigorously to form emulsion at the same time it should be vigorous enough to allow the caffeine to be extracted into the organic layer. 6) Collect the organic extract from the first separation and organic extract plus the emulsion layer from the second extraction in a beaker. 7) These combined organic layers should then be dried of using anhydrous calcium chloride pellets. Note: Sufficient drying agents need to be added. Taking care that the pallets do not stick to the bottom of the flask. 8) The organic layers are then decanted into tared distillation flask passing through silicone impregnated filter paper which traps the water while allowing the organic layer to pass through. 9) Add a wood chip to the distillation flask, to allow uniform boiling and distill of the solvent to yield a greenish-white crystalline residue of caffeine, weighing approximately 0.25 g. Note: A wood chip is preferred as oppose to the ceramic chip as wooden chip can be easily removed. Recrystallisation: 1) Dissolve the crude product i.e caffeine in 5 mL of hot acetone in a small Erlenmeyer flask. 2) To this add hot solution add hexane dropwise. Stop adding hexane as soon as the solution turns cloudy. 3) Then allow the solution to cool at room temperature. The crystals will start appearing in the flask. 4) Using the Hirsch funnel or a very small Bchner funnel employ vacuum suction to remove the crystals. Give washing to the crystals using hexane to remove of the solvent. 5) Dry the crystals.

6) To obtain more crystals, boil the remaining acetone solution till it reaches a point where it is cloudy again. At this point repeat steps 3 to 5. 7) Collect all the crystals and weigh them to get the actual yield. Note: The principle behind this experiment is to dissolve the substance in a solvent which readily dissolves the crude product. To this solution a bad solvent is added, in which the crude product does not dissolve but the solvent is miscible, till the solvent is saturated with product and an extra drop cause the solvent to become turbid and the crystals precipitates out..