Experiment 10 - The extraction of Caffeine from Cola drinks >> Extraction Flowchart

Experiment 10 - The extraction of Caffeine from Cola drinks

Extraction Flowchart

The results above show that multiple extractions with smaller volumes are more effective than one extraction with a larger volume of methylene chloride. Clearly, a limit should be drawn somewhere, else the extraction procedure becomes extremely tedious and drawn out. Extracting into equal volumes of a new solvent three times is sufficient for most applications. The flowchart below summarizes the process:

Summary

This tutorial on liquid-liquid extraction has presented the following topics:

• What experimental goals are best achieved with extractions.
• How extractions work: differences of solubility in two or more solvents.
• Proper experimental technique for using a separatory funnel.
• The number of times that an extraction should be performed.