Programmable polymer caffeine extraction

Abstract

The invention relates to a caffeine-templated MIP copolymer matrix and devices employing these polymers that exhibit high absorbance or binding capacity for caffeine while retaining rapid caffeine uptake kinetics, and which function in both cold and hot aqueous environments to selectively remove caffeine from a beverage with a high selectivity factor in order to better preserve the sensory aspects of the decaffeinated beverage, and which can easily be used by a typical consumer to treat their beverage within a short time frame of less than about one minute. More specifically, the invention relates to copolymeric MIP matrices produced according to methods wherein the template to polymer ratio is dramatically increased in order to raise the affinity of the resulting MIP materials, and hyper-crosslinked MIP matrices produced using higher amounts of crosslinking agents to produce high affinity copolymer matrices that better maintain a high degree of selectivity towards caffeine while minimizing the uptake of congeners to better maintain the sensory characteristics of the decaffeinated beverages. The invention further relates to manual and mechanical devices employing the inventive MIP matrices in a variety of physical forms and configurations that enable a user to decaffeinate a beverage manually or automatically within one minute or less, or select a level of decaffeination by controlling the exposure time to said devices.