Organic Chemistry Lab

Being able to extract a compound or substance from a product or object will encourage us in being able to do the same in a similar manner with a tea solution. Extracting compounds is an important step in any kind of organic chemistry lab and will help us be better at accomplishing the experiment in a much faster and accurate rate than from before.

Experimental To begin the experiment, a tea solution must be made by incorporating a tea bag into a beaker filled with almost boiling water and the weight of the tea bag should be given from the instructor, just for result comparison purposes. Place 20 mL of water in a 50-mL beaker and proceed to heat until a near boiling state has been reached, while some cover is on top of the beaker. Put any
Conditioning would be the first step by passing 5 mL of distilled water and 5 mL of dichloromethane through the column and making the column much more easier to work with and allows for faster and better extractions when adding the tea solution. Load is the next step by beginning to add the caffeinated tea solution and slowly vacuuming, where the column will start to change to a brownish color and slow down the extraction just by a bit. Once the caffeinated tea solution has been extracted and the caffeine and other impurities remain in the brownish-colored column, Washing is the next step by adding another 5 mL of water and 5 mL of dichloromethane through the column, to get rid of the impurities lodged along with the caffeine. The column now only contains the desired compound caffeine and to extract caffeine from the column, a smaller one-armed Erlenmeyer flask that is clean will used to hold this extraction and 5 mL of ethyl acetate will be passed through SPE column, to obtain and remove the caffeine from the SPE column. A small one-armed Erlenmeyer flask containing 5 mL of ethyl acetate along with the compound caffeine, should be the result after using the SPE column
Be sure to record the weight of a 50-mL beaker that will be used in the step, in order to determine the weight of the crude caffeine. Transfer the ethyl acetate liquid into another 50-mL beaker, rinse the small one-armed Erlenmeyer flask with another 5 mL of ethyl acetate, and transfer the remaining ethyl acetate liquid into the beaker once more, to ensure all the caffeine has been gathered and transferred to the beaker. To remove the ethyl acetate solution, a blowing procedure will be done by attaching one end of the tube to an air valve and the other to a small glass pipette. A hot plate would also assist in the evaporation of ethyl acetate, but only at a low and substantial heat. Slowly glaze the top of the beaker with the glass pipette, where the blown air is pushing the ethyl acetate solution into one side of the beaker and remain position like this until all of the ethyl acetate liquid is no longer visible. Weigh the 50-mL beaker containing only a brown residue on the bottom, indicating a resulting amount of caffeine, and subtract the recorded weight of the 50-mL beaker and caffeine with the weight of the clean 50-mL beaker that was recorded before adding the ethyl acetate solution with caffeine. Put any extra dichloromethane in the halogenated waste bottle and if a sufficient amount of caffeine was