What exactly is caffeine? Can you see it? Can you have a bowl of caffeine? How are some drinks decaffeinated?
In: Chemistry
In its pure form, caffeine is a white powder that is highly soluble in water. Decaffeination has traditionally been done by adding an organic solvent like benzene, ethyl acetate, or dichloromethane that the caffeine also dissolves well in. Removing the solvent removes the caffeine. Most modern decaffeination uses either a charcoal filter or supercritical CO2 to remove the caffeine.
Caffeine is a molecule. It’s a naturally occurring substance found in the seeds, fruit, nuts, and leaves of a bunch of different plants (most famously, the coffee tree.)
It’s most often consumed by drinking it, through various forms of extraction. The seed from the coffee tree (which people call a “bean” because it looks like one) is roasted, ground, and mixed with boiling water to extract its flavour and to extract the caffeine. This makes a caffeinated beverage that we refer to as “coffee.”
You could extract pure caffeine but you wouldn’t want to eat it on its own. You can get it in pill form at health stores if you really wanted to.
Yes, caffeine is a white powder when extracted. There’s a couple ways of extracting it, a common one is to take coffee beans and soak them in liquid carbon dioxide as the caffeine will disolve into the liquid, then the beans can be removed and liquid can be boiled off and leave behind essentially pure caffeine. The process also doesn’t majorly impact the coffee beans flavor so this also is a way to make decaffeinated coffee.
There are other solvents and processes that can be used, but generally follow similar procedure, soak beans in caffeine targeting solvent, remove beans, extract caffeine from solution. Most pre-made caffeinated beverages have caffeine powder added to them because it’s easier to get a consistent product, so decaffeinated versions just skip that step.
Caffeine is a chemical naturally occurring in coffee, tea, chocolate, and some other foods. It’s a stimulant that works by blocking the neurotransmitters that make you feel tired.
Yes, you can see it if you get enough of it together. Like many pure chemicals, it takes the form of a white powder, but you can also buy it in pill form.
If you ate a bowl of caffeine powder you would almost certainly overdose and die.
Coffee is decaffeinated by “rinsing” it with chemical solvents that bind to caffeine. Caffeine-free teas are usually just herbal infusions that don’t naturally contain caffeine.
Caffeine is an alkaloid. Yes you can see it, it’s just a white crystalized substance, and you can even buy it in powdered form. Technically yes but, a couple grams fairly dangerous, and 10 grams is considered deadly.
Decaffeinated coffee/teas are typically made by exposing beans/leaves to chemicals that break down the caffeine into something else. Decaffeinated also isn’t fully decaffeinated it’s just drastically reduced levels of caffeine.
Latest Answers