Process intensification in lactic acid production: A review of membrane based processes

Lactic acid the most widely occurring hydroxy-carboxylic acid has traditionally been used as food preservative and acidulent. So long, it has been produced through either chemical synthesis route or fermentation route the latter being the dominating one. Despite its tremendous potential for large scale production and use in a wide variety of applications, cost-effective production of high purity lactic acid has remained a challenge for decades, mainly due to high downstream processing cost. In the recent years, possibility of integration of highly selective membranes with the conventional fermentors has opened a golden opportunity for full commercial exploitation of the tremendous application potential of this wonder chemical. This paper discusses recent developments of such membrane-based processes representing process intensification in production of monomer grade lactic acid while suggesting a very promising production scheme.