[allgae]

Hi, I am new to this forum, in fact I am new to using forums. I have gone back to school after many years off. I am in chemistry 100 and having a hard time finding answers to my lab questions. My husband directed me here. So here's my present question: I am extracting caffeine from a cola using dichloromethane. I know that caffeine is slightly soluble in water and very soluble in dichloromethane. What I want to know is what intermolecular force attracts the caffeine and dichloromethane and what elements are involved in the attraction?

[ARGOS++]

Dear Allgae;

To inform you about Caffeine you may read for this times in “Wiki”.

You will see there that Caffeine is an Organic Base, because the lot of Nitrogens.
That means that you can moderate its solubility, especially for water.

So the basic recipe would be:
Take 300ml cola (a can) into a 1.0 Liter “Separatory Funnel” and add slowly (Why?) concentrated NaHCO₃ Solution till you reaches a pH 6 till 7 (at least higher then 5). Now the Caffeine will be back to the base state and is easy and quantitave to be extracted with your “DCM”. Do the Extraction with 3 till 5 times a small volume of DCM to be as quantitative as possible.

The rest of the procedure depends of your main goal, that means if you need it quantitative or preparative. Primary you can do with a Spectrometer, secondary by first drying the DCM solution and finally evaporation the DCM.

I hope this may be of help to you

Good Luck!
                   ARGOS⁺⁺