Recent trends in lactic acid biotechnology: A brief review on production to purification

Lactic acid is one of the most important organic acid which is being extensively used around the globe in a range of industrial and biotechnological applications. From its very old history to date, many methods have been introduced to improve the optimization of lactic acid to get highest yields of the product of industrial interests. In serious consideration of the worldwide economic and lactic acid consumption issues there has been increasing research interest in the value of materials with natural origin, which are cheap, abundant and easily available all around the year. Recent trends showed that lactic acid production through fermentation is advantageous over chemical due to the environmental concerns of the modern world. The eco-friendly processing and fermentable capability of many of the agricultural and agro-industrial based raw materials or by-products respectively makes them attractive candidates in fermentation biotechnology to produce a value-added product with multiple applications. In fact, major advances have already been achieved in recent years in order to get pure lactic acid with optimal yield. The present review work is summarized on the multi-step processing technologies to produce lactic acid from different substances as a starting material potentially from various agro-industrial based biomasses. The information is also given on a purification through schematic representation of the product of quality interests.