[ames00]

I'm doing my organic lab report and there are two questions I have no idea how to do.
I've asked the prof. but he takes forever to email me back so..

The questions:
Write equations showing how caffeine could be extracted from an organic solvent and subsequently isolated.

Write equations showing how acetaminophen might be extracted from an organic solvent such as an ether, if it were soluble.

how would you go about doing this???
would you use a simple reaction equation with reactants and then products? we used dicholormethane to extract the caffiene from tea so would you take the caffeine molecular structure + dichloromethane= the products??

[Yggdrasil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-base_extraction

[D|0XIN]

Hi,

I think what you're being asked to do is:

1) look at the 2D structure of caffeine
2) look up or make an educated guess as to caffeine's solubility in water versus an organic solvent such as dichloromethane (DCM). Caffeine must have a preference (ie. higher solubility) in one or the other solvents in order for the extraction to work.

[hint: charged (protonated or deprotonated) forms of caffeine are not soluble in DCM, so a base (eg. NaCO₃) would have been added to make the unprotonated form available before you did the extraction)

check out this link:
http://www.pharmainfo.net/exclusive/technical/extraction_of_caffeine_from_tea_leaves/


It may have some clues.. Anyway, to write an equation you should probably show some sort or equlibirum between caffeine in water (in a charged form, then deprotonation upon adding the base?) and caffeine in your solvent favoured toward the solvent it is more soluble in.