Recent Development of Lactic Acid Production using Membrane Bioreactors

Abstract

Lactic acid has been widely used as flavour and preservative in the food, pharmaceutical, leather and textile industries. It can be produced by fermentation process of the substrates with high lactose content, such as cheese whey, soybean milk, corn, and potatoes. Among various existing technologies, membrane bioreactor is one of the promising methods to achieve high productivity of lactic acid. In addition, membrane bioreactor allows integration of fermentation and separation steps, thus it able to simultaneously maintain high cell density, recycle the cells for further use, and continuously remove lactic acid from the fermenter.