Fermentation

Lactic acid can be produced either by chemical synthesis or microbial fermentation.

Chemical synthesis of lactic acid is mainly based on the hydrolysis of lactonitrile by strong acids,
and this process yields a racemic mixture of the 2 isomers, L-and D-lactic acid (Holten et al.,
1971; John et al., 2007).
Compare to chemical synthesis, microbial lactic acid fermentation offers an advantages in
terms of the utilization of renewable cellulosic biomass, low production temperature, low energy
consumption and production of pure highly optical lactic acid. Currently, almost all industries
use microbial fermentation using lactic acid bacteria.
The fermentation is carried under anaerobic condtions inorder to convert glucose into
lactic acid instead of CO2 and H2O and it can produce two lactic acid molecules from one
glucose molecule. The conventional fermentation processes for producing lactic acid from
cellulosic biomass include the following four steps [7]:
1. Collection and pretreatment of cellulosic biomass.
2. Enzymatic hydrolysis: depolymerizing polysaccharides to fermentative sugars by
means of hydrolic enzymes.
3. Fermentation: metabolizing the sugars to lactic acid specifically lactic acid bacteria.
4. Separation and purification: purification of lactic acid to meet the standard of
comericial applications.