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Author: Subject: Caffeine extraction
Zilantische
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[*] posted on 1-11-2019 at 05:32
Caffeine extraction


Hello, I'm trying to extract caffeine from coffee beans. The main problem that I am having right now is finding the pKa of caffeine's conjugate acid. Pubchem and other resources say that it is 0.6, but this seems unreasonable to me. I don't think that caffeine's conjugate acid is stronger than hydrofluoric acid. I am trying to find the pKa to calculate how much acid I should add according to henderson-hasselbalch equation.
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Ubya
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[*] posted on 1-11-2019 at 06:14


wait what? the henderson-hasselbach equation is used to calculate the ph of a buffer solution, are you trying to do the equivalent of a titration using that equation?




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Zilantische
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[*] posted on 1-11-2019 at 08:02


Kind of. I want to have [HA] be in excess by 1-2 orders of magnitude, but I can't plug in a pKa value to the equation because I can't find a believable pKaH for caffeine. The only value I've found is 0.6, and this is extremely atypical because it is around 6.95 for protonated imidazole. I think caffeine's pKa should be close to this since there is an imidazole ring in caffeine.
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B(a)P
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[*] posted on 1-11-2019 at 10:57


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&...

3.6 according to this.
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Zilantische
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[*] posted on 2-11-2019 at 11:59


I saw that, but it doesn't make much sense to me. Why would caffeine's pKaH be so much lower than that of imidazole?
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