Low-Cost Production of Lactic Acid. Dairy Wastes as Fermentation Medium for the Production of Lactic Acid

Project Report from the year 2014 in the subject Biology - Micro- and Molecular Biology, , course: Personal Research Project, language: English, abstract: The aim of the present research work was to study a low-cost production of Lactic acid by fermentation of a non-conventional medium e.g. cheese whey, while considering milk medium as a standard using Lactococcus lactics.

The effect of different process parameters such as pH of the medium, temperature, inoculums size, age of inoculums and incubation time was monitored to enhance the lactose conversion in cheese whey to lactic acid. Fermentations were performed without any pH control. The optimization of the fermentation conditions resulted in a significant decrease in fermentation time, besides an increase in lactose conversion to lactic acid. The optimized process conditions resulted in high lactose conversion to lactic acid production (0.539%) after an incubation period of 72 hrs at 37°C.

The maximum lactic acid production was 0.767% which was observed when milk media (0.767%) was used as the standard fermentation medium, whereas non-conventional cheese whey medium showed 0.539% lactic acid production at pH 5.5.