Citric Acid

[drbecken]

I enrolled in Organic Chemisty this semester and am captivated by what we are doing in the lab (just wish it wasn't a six-hour lab). The extraction of organic chemicals is mesmerizing, and I would like to start to try a few simple experiments at home. Can anybody set me on the right track by giving me hints on one of the following projects? It would give me a little experience and I would appreciate the help.

1) extracting and purifying citric acid from lemon juice.

2) extracting and purifying caffeine from coffee.

3) extracting and purififying nicotine from tobacco leaves

Thank you

Daniel Beckendorf

[Uwe Neue]

All three of your proposed projects are not a simple enterprise that you can carry out in your kitchen. You will need rather sophisticated tools. Lemon juice, coffee and tobacco leaves contain millions of different chemicals, and your target compounds are "1 in a million".

It can be done, and chemists with the right tools can do it. You first need to think about, how you would know that something contains your target compounds. Then we can think about how to do the purification.