Kinetics and equilibria of tea infusion: Rates of extraction of theaflavin,caffeine and theobromine from several whole teas and sieved fractions

The rates of infusion of theaflavin and caffeine into water at 80°C have been measured for Kapchorua Pekoe Fannings, Kapchorua Pekoe Dust, Betjan Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe and Rupai Flowery Orange Fannings whole teas and sieved fractions. For Kapchorua PF fractions the rates of theobromine infusion were also determined. Caffeine always infused faster than theobromine, and both infused faster than theaflavin. Rate constants were obtained from the slopes of first order kinetic plots which yielded straight lines with small intercepts. The rate constants for all three constituents increased by a factor of 2.2 as leaf size decreased from 850–1000μm to 500–600μm. The rates of extraction from whole teas varied more than fourfold. Kapchorua PD gave the most rapid rates and Betjan FBOP the slowest. Comparisons of similarly sized fractions of teas showed that leaf size distributions accounted for half these differences and the intrinsic properties of the leaf for the remaining factor of two. The Kenyan CTC teas gave higher rate constants than the Indian orthodox teas. From the rate constants, the effective diffusion coefficients for theaflavin and caffeine in Betjan FBOP leaf were calculated and found to be some 100 times smaller than in water. This shows the diffusion processes within the leaf to be complex ones.