Coffee beans have caffeine naturally in them. How is the caffeine removed from them to create decaffeinated coffee?
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This may not answer your question buy decaf was originally discovered by the Sanka brothers.
A ship of theirs carrying coffee beans to the US sank in sea water. They recovered the beans from the hold on that ship and processed them. After trying the coffee made from them, they found that the coffee was almost caffeine free. So, they marketed that load as caffeine free coffee.
So it would seem that sea water was able to draw out the caffeine.
Source: A placard on my table at a Dennys when I was a kid.
Addendum: I looked up how they do it in modern times. This was the most common answer:
The most-common methods of decaffeination involve chemical solvents, usually ethyl acetate or methylene chloride.
In the direct method, the coffee beans are steamed and then rinsed
repeatedly with the chemical solvent to flush away the caffeine.
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