First-derivative spectrophotometric and gas-liquid chromatographic determination of caffeine in foods and pharmaceuticals. I. Rapid determination of caffeine in coffee, tea and soft drinks.

A simple and rapid spectrophotometric method is described for the determination of caffeine in coffee, tea and soft drinks. To exclude the irrelevant absorptions, due to the presence of some accompanying naturally occurring ingredients in the analysed multicomponent drinks, the derivative method is found to be superior. Another gas-liquid chromatographic (GLC) procedure for the quantitation of the analeptic agent, in bulk form and in the same drinks, is also investigated. The recovery testing of the proposed methods gives good percentage mean recoveries with relatively low deviations. The results of the methods described are compared with those obtained by direct UV-spectrophotometry as well as by applying an official pharmacopoeial procedure for caffeine.