制药工程专业英语 第6单元.docxVIP

PART 2 BIOCHEMICAL PHARMACEUTICALS Unit 6 Isolation of Caffeine from Tea In this experiment，Caffeine will be isolated from tea leaves. The major problem of the isolation is that caffeine does not occur alone in tea leaves，but is accompanied by other natural substances from which it must be separated. The major component of tea leaves is cellulose，which is the major structural material of all plant cells. Cellulose is a polymer of glucose. Since cellulose is virtually insoluble in water，it presents no problems in the isolation procedure. Caffeine，on the other hand，is water soluble and is one of the major substances extracted into the solution called tea.”Caffeine comprises as much as 5 percent by weight of the leaf material in tea plants. Tannins also dissolve in the hot water used to extract tea leaves. The term tannin does not refer to a single homogeneous compound，or even to substances which have similar chemical structure. It refers to a class of compounds which have certain properties in common. Tannins are phenolic compounds having molecular weights between 500 and 3000. They are widely used to tan”leather. They precipitate alkaloidsz and proteins from aqueous solutions. Tannins are usually divided into two classes: those which can be hydrolyzed and those which cannot. Tannins of the first type which are found in tea generally yield glucose and gallic acid when they are hydrolyzed. These tannins are esters of gallic acid and glucose. They represent structures in which some of the hydroxyl groups in glucose have been esterified by digalloyl groups. The non-hydrolyzable tannins found in tea are condensation polymers of catechin. These polymers are not uniform in structure，but catechin molecules are usually linked together at ring positions 4 and 8. When tannins are extracted into hot water，the hydrolyzable ones are partially hydrolyzed，meaning that free gallic acid is also found in tea. The tannins，by virtue of their phenolic groups，and gallic acid by virtue