does soda get flat from being repeatedly refrigerated?

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Velk

Senior member
Jul 29, 2004
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As unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence, I found that freezing a can of diet coke without rupturing the can ( the top and ends bulged out ) and then letting it thaw, it tasted disgusting afterwards. Or at least more disgusting than diet coke normally tastes.

I also vaguely remember some mention that sunlight shining through clear bottles and temperature cycling can do strange things to aspartame, the sweetener in coke zero.

So while the carbonation claim is reasonably dubious, there might be something to the flavor idea if they are diet softdrinks, although probably not if it's just fridge vs room temperature unless you have a really really high room temperature.
 

wseyller

Senior member
May 16, 2004
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I'm not a chemist but, leaving the soda out of the refridgerator does help keep the carbonation, this I know. There is a huge difference and that is not paranoia.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
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www.slatebrookfarm.com
On a side note, back when pepsi came in the tall narrow 16 ounce bottles, we had my brother take to packs (8 packs back then) down to the basement (where it was cooler). He thought we meant in the freezer in the basement. The site of a freezer, half filled with frozen foam is one of those images that's forever stuck in my head.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
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Originally posted by: wseyller
I'm not a chemist but, leaving the soda out of the refridgerator does help keep the carbonation, this I know. There is a huge difference and that is not paranoia.
How could you possibly know this? This goes against everything I've spent my adult life learning, so call me doubtful. There is no instance that I can conceive of where the CO2 would be contained better in a warm can than a cold one, but there are at least three reasons why the opposite should be true.
 

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
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Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: wseyller
I'm not a chemist but, leaving the soda out of the refridgerator does help keep the carbonation, this I know. There is a huge difference and that is not paranoia.
How could you possibly know this? This goes against everything I've spent my adult life learning, so call me doubtful. There is no instance that I can conceive of where the CO2 would be contained better in a warm can than a cold one, but there are at least three reasons why the opposite should be true.

Yeah, I'm gonna officially declare shenanigans on that, wseyller.

If the container is closed and has reached pressure equilibrium the CO2 can only leak out as fast as the container leaks. Even with very leaky plastic containers that's going to be a tiny amount over a couple days. Changing the temperature of the liquid (up or down) isn't going to matter much either.

One thing to keep in mind... you taste warm and cold things differently. A warm coke is going to "sting" more than a cold one and seem to have more CO2.
 

wseyller

Senior member
May 16, 2004
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whatever, i'm done thinking about this. you guys give me a headache. I've spent my whole life determining how soda should taste. So I will continue to not refridgerate my soda. Have a good day.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
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Originally posted by: Smilin
One thing to keep in mind... you taste warm and cold things differently. A warm coke is going to "sting" more than a cold one and seem to have more CO2.
Exactly. This is why cheap beer is typically served much colder than 'good' beer - so you won't taste it so much. :p
 

MrDudeMan

Lifer
Jan 15, 2001
15,069
94
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Originally posted by: wseyller
whatever, i'm done thinking about this. you guys give me a headache. I've spent my whole life determining how soda should taste. So I will continue to not refridgerate my soda. Have a good day.

so your answer to a scientific debate which opposes your opinion and also proves it wrong is to walk away and get pissy about it? really nice.
 

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
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Originally posted by: Bigsm00th
Originally posted by: wseyller
whatever, i'm done thinking about this. you guys give me a headache. I've spent my whole life determining how soda should taste. So I will continue to not refridgerate my soda. Have a good day.

so your answer to a scientific debate which opposes your opinion and also proves it wrong is to walk away and get pissy about it? really nice.

even though I win, I'll still get his back here. It's just soda :p
 

ng12345

Senior member
Jan 23, 2005
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never thought this would cause so much debate ... had fun reading the replies

thanks for all the info!
 

Throwmeabone

Senior member
Jan 9, 2006
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As long as it is not opened it doesn't matter what you do to it because the pressure is mainted which keeps the gas dissolved in the liquid. Once its opened, it is better to refrigerate it because gases stay dissolved better in low temperatures.


Originally posted by: ng12345
My roommate and I got into an argument about the dynamics of keeping soda (coke/sprite) carbonated

We just bought a "fridge pak" of soda for a party tonight, so I placed the whole pak in the fridge.

His claim:

If you put a can of soda in the fridge, and then let it get to room temperature, and then cool it again - it will lose its flavor/carbonation. So instead he wants to leave the fridge pak outside at room temperature and only cool a couple cans.

I can't find anythign to prove this claim through google, and I can't find something to definitively disprove the claim.

The only thing I've seen is that cans stored at higher temperatures will lose carbonation faster, but this would actually further my idea of leaving them in the fridge for tonight, and if we need room in teh fridge, moving em out afterwards.

HIs claim sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but i was wondering if there is a technical answer disproving him

 

daniel49

Diamond Member
Jan 8, 2005
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seems I have heard if you cap and store in fridge upside down they won't go flat...can't say I have ever tried it though.
 

patentman

Golden Member
Apr 8, 2005
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Originally posted by: Throwmeabone
As long as it is not opened it doesn't matter what you do to it because the pressure is mainted which keeps the gas dissolved in the liquid. Once its opened, it is better to refrigerate it because gases stay dissolved better in low temperatures.

No. Remember the ideal gas law, PV=nRT, where P=pressure, V=Volume, n= number of atoms of gas present, R= universal gas constant and T= temperature. Therefore P=nRT/V

It says, among other things that, all other things constant, if temperature goes down, pressure goes down, if temperature goes up, pressure goes up.

Anyways, I could've said all this myself, but here is the answer to your question: CUT AND PASTE FROM ANOTHER FORUM BEGINS HERE:

"Anyway, your question relates to the capacity of liquid to hold gasses in solution. There are many factors that affect just how much will dissolve in the first place - composition of the liquid, and type of gas are the most obvious.

A carbonated beverage is supersaturated with CO2. To explain this, I'll have to introduce you to a theory related to the behaviour of ideal gasses across a boundary. The physical law of interest is Henry's Law which states that a gas will permeate (go through) a boundary in order to equalize the pressure of the gas on each side of the boundary. We use this in carbonating beverages by sealing the liquid into a container through which the gass can't pass, but can sustain a high pressure - like steel, for instance. We then apply pressurized CO2 to the open air above the liquid in the container - called the headspace. The liquid, which had previously only seen atmospherric pressure of that gas now see's it greatly increased in the headspace. The CO2 will move through the top of the liquid (the boundary between it and the headspace) until the pressure of CO2 in the liquid is the same as that in the headspace. This saturates the liquid with CO2 at that pressure and temperature.

To understand why the cold liquid can contain more gas than a warm liquid, we look to the ideal gas law from thermodynamics: PV=nRT. The important terms to your work are P (pressure), V (volume - how big), and T (temperature). n is the number of molecules of the gas present and R is the ideal gas constant. The relationship of interest is that the pressure and volume of the system (the gas in its environment) is related to the temperature of that system. You can see that if pressure and volume are held constant, for the equality to be true, the number of gas molecules has to increase as temperature increases (remember: R is a constant). THis proves that as temperature decreases, the amount of gas that can be contained in the environment with pressure P and and volume V must increase.

A couple of more terms: Saturation is where, at a particular temperature, you can get no more of something into another something. For gasses in most liquids, solubility increases as temperature decreases. For solids into liquids, the opposite is true - solubility increases as temperature increases. Supersaturation is where, by some means, you change conditions so a saturated something (liquid in our case) cannot hold all of what's dissolved in it. This can be caused by decreasing the pressure (that's why your soda fizzes when you open it), increase the temperature, or agitate it (why your soda gushes out if you shake the bottle up) - by changing the conditions.

When you open your cold soda, it will quickly let go of the head pressure (the CO2 stored in the open space above the soda in the can or bottle). This is the hiss you hear. In a bottle, you may also see a rush of bubbles through the liquid. This is the CO2 in the soda rushing to reach saturation equilibrium with the atmosphere. As the temperature increases, this saturation equilibrium decreases, causing more gas to leave the solution. To understand this, we need to understand another implication of the ideal gas law: the relationship of pressure to temperature. We can solve PV=nRT to find this relationship: P=nRT/V. Holding n, R, and V constant, and varying T, we see that pressure is directly proportional to temperature. What does this say to us? This: since our soda is colder, initially, than the atmosphere when we open the bottle, the soda will have more molecules of gas in it and remain at pressure equillibrium. We can see this directly from the ideal gas law by solving for the amount of gas in solution at a given temperature - assuming pressure and volume are constant: n = PV/RT. Again, we hold P, V and R constant (for our purposes in thi discussion, we can ignore R as it is a constant in all cases) and find that as temperature DECREASES, the amount of gas, n, increases! Also, we can see from the same equality , that the amount of gas decreases as temperature increases!

Now it all comes together: the volume is the volume of the soda. It is contained by the walls of the glass, and the air-liquid boundary at the top. Henry's law tells us that the gas can pass through the air-liquid boundary in order to equalize the pressure of CO2 apparent on each sideof that boundary. The ideal gas law tells us that a quantity of gas at a low tmperature and constant pressure is greater than the quantity of gas at a high temperature and constant pressure. In your system, using all these concepts, the soda goes flat as the temperature rises because the amount of gas the soda can hold decreases as its temperature increases."


 

gsellis

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 2003
6,061
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Originally posted by: Smilin
Originally posted by: bonkers325
plastic and aluminum do not leak gases in significant amounts. as long as the seal on the can/bottle remains intact, the soda should be nice and bubbly

however over the course of a few years, it will lose carbonation

Not true.

Plastic leaks CO2 badly.

Cans have a shelf life of 1year (due to flavor, not CO2 loss). 2 liter, 20oz and other plastic bottles have a shelf life of 90 days (due to CO2 loss). Sodas with artificial sweetners have a 90 day shelf life in all cases (sweetner degrades).

Temperature will have an impact on how quickly the soda loses CO2 when the container is open but will have little impact on a closed container.

Ex- Coke employee :)
I would think that the shorter shelf life would be due to exposure to light vs CO2 loss.
BUT then again, I did recently run into a lot of Jolt that was flat as a pancake in a commercial refrigerator.
 

stardrek

Senior member
Jan 25, 2006
264
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A wonderful example that anyone can try, that demonstrates the principals of thermodynamics that patentman refers too is to:

Take a balloon and fill it up almost all the way. Be sure to do this in a warm room and hold your breath for a few seconds before you exhale into the balloon. Now take that balloon and put it in your freezer. After a few hours, as long as you don't open the freezer to take a sneak peak, the balloon will have shrunk quite a bit. Take the balloon out and leave it in a warm room and you can watch it re-inflate to its original size.

Now if you will:
Imagine why you can fit that smaller volume of gas into a liquid. The gas takes up less volume (area) so it can be fit into smaller places.

With your balloon fully inflated you may not be able to fit it into a small space in a bookshelf, but after you cooled all the gasses inside the balloon will fit very easily.

Now instead of a balloon just imagine the trillions of CO2 molecules bouncing around in the soda. Because you have cooled their temperature, they are not moving (vibrating) so violently and therefore need less space to exist. This allows them to be grouped closer together and take up an overall smaller volume.

So if we go back to my balloon example we can look at it this way:

If the molecules of soda were arranged on a bookshelf then you could fit 10 per shelf when they are cold. But when they are warm, because they take up more volume (area) you can only fit 8 per shelf. If you can imagine billion of tiny bookshelves as your soda and the shelves in those bookshelves as the space you fit the CO2 balloons then you can see why having the soda colder will allow you to hold those extra balloons of CO2. If it were warm those extra 2 balloons would be forced off the shelf and when you open the bottle they fly out.

Hope this helps.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
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Originally posted by: stardrek
Now if you will:
Imagine why you can fit that smaller volume of gas into a liquid. The gas takes up less volume (area) so it can be fit into smaller places.
But the gas phase density has no bearing on what the density will be when it's in the liquid phase. This is like using the ideal gas law to describe a liquid (as patentman's source above did - this is a very, very common mistake for undergrad engineers ;)). For example, water vapor at temperature T and pressure P has a density X. Liquid water at (T,P) has density Y, and solid water at (T,P) has density Z. The phase change itself imparts drastic density changes - typically around 3 orders of magnitude in SI units - going from gas to liquid.

On top of this change in density due to phase change, one must consider what actually happens during the absorption process. As I stated previously, the species actually changes chemically when it's absorbed into the liquid. Thus, the new species (carbonic acid) will surely have a different density than gaseous CO2 at the same T and P.
 

stardrek

Senior member
Jan 25, 2006
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The gas never goes into a liquid phase in my example. If that is the impression I gave, I'm sorry, I am strickly speaking of the gas phase of the CO2. I was stating that the gas form of CO2 is being disolved in the liquid soda.
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
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Originally posted by: Velk
As unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence, I found that freezing a can of diet coke without rupturing the can ( the top and ends bulged out ) and then letting it thaw, it tasted disgusting afterwards. Or at least more disgusting than diet coke normally tastes.

I also vaguely remember some mention that sunlight shining through clear bottles and temperature cycling can do strange things to aspartame, the sweetener in coke zero.

So while the carbonation claim is reasonably dubious, there might be something to the flavor idea if they are diet softdrinks, although probably not if it's just fridge vs room temperature unless you have a really really high room temperature.

I pretty sure it's due to the following:

When you freeze the carbonated beverage, the liquid is freezing and allowing the CO2 (which is far from its freezing point) to escape back into gaseous form. The bulging is from the soda melting back into liquid and fighting for limited space with the CO2 gas. CO2 gas does not just go back into liquid magically. I'm not sure what goes into the carbonization process, but it's not like a mix one part water with one part CO2 and poof! you have carbonized water.

Once CO2 escapes from a liquid, it stays outside. I remember my chemistry lessons in high school on exactly this topic (damn that was like 7 years ago). There used to be a little pump that you could buy and put on the top of your 2 liter bottles that claimed it would keep your soda carbonated as you drank it. It didn't. Why? Because it pumped in the elements of our air, which is largely NOT CO2. As you drink down in a bottle of soda, you give the CO2 in carbonation more room to escape out of carbonation. Nothing can prevent this except the presence of air saturated with CO2 already. So the drink will lose carbonation until the amount of space is filled with CO2 and reached an equilibrium. The only way to retard the process is chilling the liquid, which slows the escape of the gas.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
Originally posted by: crownjules
I pretty sure it's due to the following:

When you freeze the carbonated beverage, the liquid is freezing and allowing the CO2 (which is far from its freezing point) to escape back into gaseous form. The bulging is from the soda melting back into liquid and fighting for limited space with the CO2 gas. CO2 gas does not just go back into liquid magically. I'm not sure what goes into the carbonization process, but it's not like a mix one part water with one part CO2 and poof! you have carbonized water.

Once CO2 escapes from a liquid, it stays outside. I remember my chemistry lessons in high school on exactly this topic (damn that was like 7 years ago). There used to be a little pump that you could buy and put on the top of your 2 liter bottles that claimed it would keep your soda carbonated as you drank it. It didn't. Why? Because it pumped in the elements of our air, which is largely NOT CO2. As you drink down in a bottle of soda, you give the CO2 in carbonation more room to escape out of carbonation. Nothing can prevent this except the presence of air saturated with CO2 already. So the drink will lose carbonation until the amount of space is filled with CO2 and reached an equilibrium. The only way to retard the process is chilling the liquid, which slows the escape of the gas.
Expansion of the can occurs due to the expansion of water during the freezing process, not from the thawing process. The reason soda tastes worse in these expanded cans is because the volume inside the can is increased when the can expands. The pressure drops accordingly, decreasing the amount of carbonation in the liquid. Given enough time after thawing, the liquid will reabsorb some of the CO2, but not as much as it would have in a smaller can where the pressure is higher.
 

klaviernista

Member
May 28, 2004
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Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: stardrek
Now if you will:
Imagine why you can fit that smaller volume of gas into a liquid. The gas takes up less volume (area) so it can be fit into smaller places.
But the gas phase density has no bearing on what the density will be when it's in the liquid phase. This is like using the ideal gas law to describe a liquid (as patentman's source above did - this is a very, very common mistake for undergrad engineers ;)). For example, water vapor at temperature T and pressure P has a density X. Liquid water at (T,P) has density Y, and solid water at (T,P) has density Z. The phase change itself imparts drastic density changes - typically around 3 orders of magnitude in SI units - going from gas to liquid.

On top of this change in density due to phase change, one must consider what actually happens during the absorption process. As I stated previously, the species actually changes chemically when it's absorbed into the liquid. Thus, the new species (carbonic acid) will surely have a different density than gaseous CO2 at the same T and P.

1) I am not an Engineer, I am a chemist.

2) My point above was to refute someone elses point that pressure does not change with temperature. If you think it doesn't, prove it.

3) And if you don;t believe me that the solubility of CO2 in water increases as temperature decreases, maybe you will believe the people at brown university; If you still need further explanation, then maybe you should look HERE (scroll down for impact of temperature and pressure on solubility of gases in solution); heck, even the Canadiens agree with me. So what do you think of that eh?

Indeed, all of this was predicted many years ago by Le Chatelier's Principal

"But the gas phase density has no bearing on what the density will be when it's in the liquid phase."

Do you mean "concentration" instead of density? A solubilized gas is not a liquid as I recall. The density of the entire solution changes, but I'm not certain what you are trying to get at by saying the density of the gas changes.

Crap, I just realized I logged in under my old username "klaviernista" instead of "patentman." Ah well.
 

CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
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Originally posted by: klaviernista
2) My point above was to refute someone elses point that pressure does not change with temperature. If you think it doesn't, prove it.
No where did I imply, infer, or otherwise state this. Are you sure you quoted the right person?
3) And if you don;t believe me that the solubility of CO2 in water increases as temperature decreases, maybe you will believe the people at brown university; If you still need further explanation, then maybe you should look HERE (scroll down for impact of temperature and pressure on solubility of gases in solution); heck, even the Canadiens agree with me. So what do you think of that eh?
I believe I was the first person to make that observation in this thread, eh? Check page 2, second post down. Again, you sure you're quoting the right post?
"But the gas phase density has no bearing on what the density will be when it's in the liquid phase."

Do you mean "concentration" instead of density? A solubilized gas is not a liquid as I recall. The density of the entire solution changes, but I'm not certain what you are trying to get at by saying the density of the gas changes.
No, I mean density. And no, a 'solubilized gas' is not a liquid. However, in the real world, there's no such thing as a 'solubilized gas.' As I stated previously, gas absorption occurs via chemical reaction rather than some physical phenomenon, at least in the case of CO2. As I stated previously, CO2 reacts to become carbonic acid. The equilibrium of this reaction is controlled by the temperature and pressure in the can, which are related as you said (sort of). See page 2, fifth post down.

edit: Note that I'm speaking in an equilibrium sense when stating that absorption of CO2 is accomplished via chemical reaction. In a transient sense, there is some liquid CO2 at very low concentrations near the gas-liquid interface.
 

stardrek

Senior member
Jan 25, 2006
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For those who want to know the carbonic acid that CycloWizard is talking about is when CO2 (carbon dioxide) reacts with H20 (water) and creates H2CO3
(carbonic acid).

H20 + C02 <-> H2CO3 is the formula.

This equation can go in either direction meaning that carbonic acid can become water and carbon dioxide easily and vise-versa under the right conditions, like in soda.