Essay Caffeine

Extraction is not only a technique used by organic chemists but it is also used to produce common products with which you are familiar. For example, vanilla extract, the popular flavoring agent, was originally extracted from vanilla beans using alcohol as the organic solvent. Decaffeinated coffee is made from coffee beans that have been decaffeinated by an extraction technique (see the essay, "Caffeine," which precedes Experiment 13). This process is similar to the procedure in Experiment 4A of this experiment, in which you will extract caffeine from an aqueous solution. 

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