Separatory Funnel Lab Report

Extraction is the process of separating substance from one phase by another phase. It is often used as one of the steps in isolating a product of an organic reaction. A separatory funnel would be used for the isolation from the mixture. A solvent will be used to remove or isolate a compound of interest from a liquid substance. In most cases, water was used as the solvent to the reaction mixture to dissolve the inorganic compound. The organic compounds will be separated from the aqueous mixture by extraction with an organic solvent that is immiscible with water. Therefore, they will form two layers when they are mixed together. The denser liquid will form the bottom layer. (Conversely, miscible liquids are soluble in each other.) The organic compounds would dissolve in extraction solvent and the inorganic impurities would remain dissolved in the water. The mixture will be place in separatory funnel enabling separation of one layer from the other—the lower, denser layer can be drained out of the bottom of the separatory funnel, leaving behind the upper layer.

Water will act as initial solvent for caffeine extraction. This is due to water that slowly soluble with caffeine at ambient temperature but highly soluble when temperature is at 100°C. Then, methylene chloride is chosen as the extraction solvent, due to its miscibility with caffeine and immiscibility with water. As mentioned above, the immiscible pair is chose for the extraction part because to allow the aqueous and organic layers to be separated. Basically, the bottom layer is the aqueous layer while the upper layer is the organic compound. However, this situation may be vice versa due to the relative densities of the two solutions. The extraction process is used to repeat in several times in order to ensure all of the organic compounds are fully drained out. Granular sodium sulfate will act as drying agent to remove the last traces of water from organic