How does your body get rid of caffeine?

Answer 1

Decaffeination is the act of removing caffeine from coffee beans, mate, cocoa, tea leaves, and other caffeine-containing materials. (While caffeine-free soft drinks are occasionally referred to as "decaffeinated," some are better termed "uncaffeinated": prepared via simply omitting caffeine from production.)

In the case of coffee, various methods can be used.

Water Decaffeination is the most popularly employed method to decaffeinate coffee. Water method simply uses water to extract caffeine from coffee without using any chemical solvents. One of the most famous water decaffeination methods is called Swiss water decaffeination. Water decaffeination is a non-toxic process that does not change the flavor or aroma of the coffee beans. The process is usually performed on unroasted (green) beans, and starts with steaming of the beans. They are then rinsed with a solvent that contains as much of the chemical composition of coffee as possible without also containing the caffeine in a soluble form. The process is repeated anywhere from 8 to 12 times until it meets either the international standard of having removed 97% of the caffeine in the beans or the EU standard of having the beans 99.9% caffeine-free by mass. Coffee contains over 400 chemicals important to the taste and aroma of the final drink; it is, therefore, challenging to remove only caffeine while leaving the other chemicals at their original concentrations.

A Methylene Chloride wash is a common way used by the coffee industry to decaffeinate beans before they are actually roasted. It is widely believed that this method of decaffeination ruins the flavor in the beans.

Another method uses carbon dioxide to remove caffeine. In this process, the combination of high temperature and pressure enables carbon dioxide to become a solvent.

Answer 2

Caffeine is metabolized by the liver, at which point it ceases to be caffeine. The compounds produced by this process are themselves metabolized and eventually most of the elements that made up the caffeine end up in being excreted from the body as urine.