The concentration of caffeine in soft drinks available in the Ugandan market

Abstract

In the recent years, there has been an enormously high increase in the consumption of soft drinks. Such drinks are widely consumed by young people. This research was therefore done to determine the concentration of caffeine in five soft drinks since caffeine is one of the ingredients in these soft drinks. The determination of the amount of caffeine in these soft drinks was performed by a simple and fast UV spectrophotometric method. Carbon tetrachloride was used as the extracting solvent during the experiment at 270 nm wavelength while Sodium carbonate solution was used to dissolve the tannins in the soft drinks. Of all the five soft drinks, Novida was found to contain the least amount of caffeine (2.862 mg/100 mL), while Mountain Dew together with Pepsi-Cola contain the highest amount of Caffeine (28.994 mg/100 mL).