Chemical vs. "Natural"

There are currently four types of decaffeination processes: 1) solvent based; 2) charcoal or carbon filtered; 3) "supercritical" carbon dioxide; and 4) triglycerides, a process developed within the last 5 years. All of these processes are performed on green coffee beans before they are roasted.

A point of clarification: you will read a lot about "water-based" processes, but every single method of decaffeination named above uses water in the process. One should therefore not assign any weight to the term "water processed" with one exception, which is the Swiss Water Process that is in fact a specific, patented carbon activated filter method.

Solvent based decaffeination is the earliest and most controversial way to remove caffeine from coffee or tea. Its inventor first used benzene as the separation agent. As benzene began to be recognized as a health hazard, it was replaced by TCE, another controversial industrial solvent. By the 1970’s and 1980’s, TCE was replaced by the chemical methylene chloride which has many advantages but is still suspected of having some carcinogenic risk. Today most processors use only ethyl acetate as a decaffeination solvent.

It is important to note that some producers claim ethyl acetate as "all natural" or "naturally decaffeinated" because the chemical compound does occur naturally in many fruits and vegetables. But the quantity of chemical required for industrial decaffeination means that almost 100% of the time, synthetically manufactured ethyl acetate is used. So far, there are no known health risks linked to the use of ethyl acetate in direct or indirect decaffeination methods.

Charcoal and carbon filtering processes were developed as a direct challenge to solvent-based methods. Using only water, coffee elements are extracted from the beans, filtered through carbon or charcoal to remove the caffeine, and then the extract is replaced back to the bean. The patented Swiss Water Process is touted as a superior method for preserving flavor, because it throws away the first batch of beans and uses the decaffeinated coffee extract to wash and filter the next batch of beans, and so forth. Basically the difference is they are not using pure water to filter the beans, they are using "flavor charged" water that is already saturated with flavor ingredients so only caffeine moves from the beans to the water. Thus there is no re-soaking or re-infusing removed flavor back into the coffee bean, because the flavor has not been removed.

Supercritical carbon dioxide fluid has both gas-like and liquid-like physical properties. You many have also heard of superheated or liquefied gas. Supercritical fluid fills the container like a gas, but can dissolve substances like a liquid – making it an excellent agent for separating an element such as caffeine from a coffee bean. The highly pressurized carbon dioxide is forced through the beans and penetrates deeply, dissolving up to 99% of the caffeine. The carbon dioxide residue evaporates from the coffee beans as they return to room temperature.

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