High-pressure liquid chromatography of caffeine in coffee

A new method is described for the determination of caffeine in coffee, based on high-pressure liquid chromatography. The caffeine is extracted from the sample with water and/or methylene chloride, and then separated from interfering materials by passing an aliquot of the extract through a high-pressure column containing sulfonated cation exchange resin, using 0.01M nitric acid as the mobile phase. An ultraviolet detector measures the absorption of the solution directly. The method is rapid and eliminates the lengthy separations common to other methods. The procedure was applied successfully to decaffeinated and non-decaffeinated green, roasted, and instant coffees. This method gives a more accurate measure of the caffeine content in decaffeinated coffee samples than the micro Bailey-Andrew and modified Levine methods, with equal or better precision. This method gives results equal to those obtained by the official methods for non-decaffeinated samples.