Recent Advances in Citric Acid Bio-production and Recovery

Abstract

Citric acid consumption is escalating gradually, witnessing high annual growth rate due to more and more advanced applications coming to light. The present review discusses different aspects of fermentation and effects of various environmental parameters and deals with the potential ways to increase the yield of citric acid to meet the ever-increasing demands of this commercially important organic acid. Different techniques for the hyperproduction of citric acid are continuously being studied from the past few decades and still there is a gap, and hence, there is an obvious need to consider new pragmatic ways to achieve industrially feasible and environmentally sustainable bio-production of citric acid. The utilization of inexpensive agro-industrial wastes and their by-products through solid-state fermentation by existing and genetically engineered strains is a potential route. This review also deals with downstream processing considering the classical and advanced approaches, which also need significant improvement. In situ product recovery method which leads to improved yields and productivity can be further optimized for large-scale production and recovery of citric acid.