Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshal Brain with today's question, how do you decaffeinate coffee and tea? Caffeine occurs naturally and more than sixty plants, and you can find it in things like coffee beans, cola nuts, and tea leaves. But some people don't like the effects of caffeine, so these different plant products need to be decaffeinated. When separated from
its source, caffeine is a white, bitter tasting powder. Several different methods are used to remove this bitter tasting powder from its natural sources. They include methylene chloride processing, ethyl acetate processing, carbon dioxide processing, and water processing. Methylene Chloride is a chemical used as a solvent to extract caffeine from many raw materials. Moll alecules of caffeine bond molecules of methylene chloride. The materials are softened in a water
bath or in steam. The next step is to process the materials with methylene chloride, either by directly soaking the materials in methylene chloride or by an indirect method. Caffeine, which is water soluble, is extracted by soaking the materials in water. Many of the flavors and oils are extracted during this process, so the solution is treated with methylene chloride to remove the caffeine from it, and then it's
returned to the material for reabsorption of the flavorings. Ethyl Acetate process products are referred to as naturally decaffeated because ethyl acetate is a chemical found naturally many fruits. Caffeine is extracted in the exact same way you do it with methylene chloride, but ethyl acetate is the solvent. To decaffeinate something using carbon dioxide, water softened materials are pressure are cooked with the carbon dioxide gas. At high pressures
and high temperatures. Carbon dioxide is in a supercritical state, acting as both a gas and a liquid. It becomes a solvent with its small, nonpolar molecules attracting the small caffeine molecules. Since flavor molecules are larger, they remain intact in the materials, which is why this process retains the flavor of the natural materials better. Caffeine extraction with water
is used primarily for coffee. The process is similar to the indirect method used in methylene chloride processing, but no chemicals are used after the caffeine is leached out of the material by soaking it in hot water for some period of time. The solution is then passed through a carbon filter, which grabs ahold of the caffeine molecules and holds them. The water is then returned to the beans
for reabsorption of the flavors and the oils. In the Swiss water process, the same method is used, but instead of soaking in water, the beans are soaked in a coffee flavored solution. This results in the caffeine being extracted
without removing any of the flavors from the coffee. Caffeine is not removed completely using any of these methods, but under federal regulations in the United States, caffeine levels must not be above two and a half percent of the product in order for the product to be labeled decaffeinated. Most of the caffeine removed in processing is manufactured for use in other products, such as medicines and soft drinks.
For example, less than five percent of the caffeine found in cola drinks is actually from the cola nut, and many of the popular high caffeine soft drinks don't contain cola nut extracts at all. The caffeine content of soft drinks is primarily and sometimes completely from the addition of caffeine extracted from these other decaffeination processes for moralness and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff works. Dot com