Production of Lactic Acid from Yam Wastes

Production of Lactic Acid from Yam Wastes

Cyrus Aseibichin

Chemical/Petrochemical Engineering, Rivers State University

maxwill2011@yahoo.com

Abstract

The rising demand for lactic acid, a versatile chemical compound with numerous applications in the food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries, has prompted the search for alternative feedstocks. Because of their abundance, sustainability, and low cost, food wastes have emerged as a potential source of lactic acid. The recent trend in usage of lactic acid is in the production of Poly Lactic Acid (PLA). PLA could be potential replacement for fossil fuel based plastics, but its production cost should be reduced to half of its current price in order to achieve that (Lopes MS et al. 2012 and Abdel-Rahman et al. 2013). If this is made possible, the demand of lactic acid would rise even higher. The complex structure of food wastes makes it difficult to break them down and access the sugars for fermentation, which is one of the main challenges. To overcome this challenge, pretreatment methods such as dilute acid and steam explosion have been used, but their effectiveness is still limited and there is room for improvement