EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. Citric acid is a biodegradable, environmentally acceptable, and versatile

chemical. It is universally accepted as a safe food ingredient additive. It is
available internationally as well as in India as anhydrous and monohydrate.
Initially, in India it. was available as monohydrate. However, with the
indigenous R & D efforts supported by the technology supplier, the anhy-
drous grade of citric acid has also been developed in India now.

2. Citric acid used in the food industry, especially in processing, is generally

dissolved beforehand. For such applications the use of the expensive
crystalline citric acid can be avoided. Recently, 50% solution of citric acid,
both technical grade as well as for food processing, has been introduced in the
international market. In India this grade is not marketed at present.

3. Citric acid is used in food processing, pharmaceuticals and industrial usage

like plasticizers in plastics industry, detergents, metal cleaning, textile
printing and dyeing, photography, sulfurdioxide absorption and others. The
end-use pattern of citric acid in India, and internationally-is as follows:

International India

Food, beverages and 70% 40%

confectionery

Pharmaceuticals 12% 55%

Industrial applications 18% 5%

4. Industrial applications of Citric acid in India are limited to only 5%, which has
a substantial scope for growth. Developmental efforts are needed for
promoting industrial applications in India.

5. Mycelium and gypsum are the by-products obtained. Mycelium is dried, to

be used as animal feed or as fertiliser. The wet gypsum is required to be
dumped outside the factory premises. After several years of seasoning of the
gypsum, it can be utilised by specialising firms for building purposes.

6. Citric acid can be manufactured by three different kind of processes:

(a) Extraction from citrus fruits

(b) Synthesis
(c) Fermentation.

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 In case of extraction, yields are low and costs of production high. It is
uneconomical and rarely used. At present about 7% of world production is
by extraction.

Technically, it is quite feasible to produce citric acid by purely chemical

reactions with no elements of byconversion.- However, the present level of
production costs practically rules out this method of producing citric acid. All
the synthetic methods proposed have eventually turned out to be expensive,
hazardous and low yielding.

Fermentation continues to be the predominant way of producing citric acid

and accounts for over 90% of the world production. Fermentation is
obviously a complex process because several reactions are sandwitched into
one single bio-reaction, for which operating conditions have to be tailored
precisely and controlled severely. Variations in results often occur even
under apparently similar operating conditions. All plants prefer to rely upon
their own experience rather than the socalled 'proven' facts.

7. Presently, there are three different types of fermentation processes in use.

These are:

(a) surface fermentation

(b) submerged fermentation

(c) solid state fermentation.

Surface and submerged fermentation processes are used quite extensively,
while solid state process is still being developed, particularly in Japan.

Despite fermentation being a relatively old technology, interestingly, ad-

vances in Science and Technology have kept it in the forefront - the modern
molecular biology, or the biotechnology as it is known, has facilitated precise
failuring of microbes for specific bioconversion tasks.

The solid state fermentation is being developed because of the localised

availability of wastes arising from fruit processing. In Japan, it is being
developed for utilising starch containing residual pulps from starch manufac-
ture, e.g. sweet potato fibrous residues, rice or wheat bran and others.

The surface and submerged processes continue to co-exist though the

submerged process has steadily increased its share. The surface process still
accounts for a substantial part of fermentation capacity worldwide. From
yield (obtainable) point of view, surface and submerged processes are rated
equally. The yield depends upon several factors, such as the origin of the

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 molasses, the chemical treatment, the height of the substrate in the trays,
activity of the micro-organism and the conditioning of the air.

8. From a practical point of view, pure sugars such as glucose and sucrose are
generally too expensive to use industrially. The raw materials can be
classified into two groups:

(i) Raw materials with low ash content like corn sugar, cane or beet
sugar, and refined starch hydrolysates yielding very pure dextrose
qualities.

(ii) Raw materials with high ash content and high amounts of other non-
sugar substances, such as cane and beet molasses, high test molasses
etc.

Sugarcane juice is in fact, a better raw material for citric acid production by
fermentation, compared to beet or cane molasses, particularly for large plants
with capacities of over 10,000 tonnes of citric acid per annum.

Molasses is one of the most widely used sources of sugar, for production of
citric acid. Being a by-product of sugar refining, it is relatively cheap. There
are several kinds of molasses obtained as by-products of different types of
sugar production, such as beet, cane etc. They vary widely in quality and
composition, depending upon the stage of sugar production at which molas-
ses have been taken out. Composition also varies from season to season and
factory to factory. In Europe and North America, beet molasses is used
widely for citric acid production.

9. In India, 1st, 2nd molasses and refiners molasses are not available. Molasses
available from sugar factories in India are very impure, though they generally
contain 40 to 45% fermentable sugar. Several salts and other impurities are
contained in the sugarcane juice, which eventually produces molasses.
Normally, these molasses cannot be used directly for fermentation. Khande-
sari molasses are available but yet not tested in India.

10. Eversince Curie's discovery of A. Niger in the second decade of the current
century, A. Niger has been used most extensively for manufacturing citric
acid. However, it is now recognized that many species of yeasts also
accumulate citric acid in their growth, albeit alongwith relatively large
amounts of iso-citric acid. Fermentation by A. Niger under surface or
submerged conditions continues to be the predominant process even today.

11. The fermented liquid contains, besides citric acid, several unwanted materi-
als, including oxalic acid, residual sugars and mycelium extraction from the
fermented liquid is, therefore, a complex process, carried out in several

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 stages. There are three different processes that can be followed for recover-
ing citric acid from the fermented liquor. These are:

(i) precipitation (classical process)

(ii) ion exchange
(iii) solvent extraction.

Precipitation is the most commonly used method. As it is more economical

to remove calcium citrate by lime precipitation than it is by ion-exchange
treatment, the ion exchange method may be used for treating lime juice rather
than filtered acid juice.

Solvent extraction is a possible alternative to the classical method but because

the available solvents tend to extract some of the impurities too, it is easier
to apply to products from glucose or alkane based substrates. The advantage
of this process is that it avoids the use of lime and sulfuric acid and the
concomitant problem of gypsum disposal.

12. The waste fluid left after calcium citrate precipitation can be concentrated and
used as animal feedstuff or cultivation of yeasts can be carried out on this
concentrated effluent for producing a material suitable for animal feed. An
aerobic digestion can also be carried out of this effluent to generate bio-gas
(methane) as by-product. In India, one manufacturer has already installed a
bio-gas generator.

13. At present, there are two major manufacturers of citric acid in India - Citurgia
Biochemicals Ltd. and Citric India Ltd. Citurgia has an installed capacity of
4,950 TPA and Citric India 1,500 TPA.

The total installed capacity at present is around 6,500 TPA and production
4,500 TPA. Over and above the proposals already approved, about 20 parties
have shown interest in this project but no concrete progress towards implem-
entation appears to have been made by any party including the approved
projects.

It would be worth mentioning here that Andhra Citrates Ltd., Hyderabad

installed a plant to manufacture 400 TPA of citric acid starting from sugar
based technology developed by RRL, Jammu. However, they could not
produce acceptable quality and closed down their unit.

14. The domestic demand of citric acid is expected to grow at a rate of 10% per
annum to around 8,000 TPA by 1994-95. A large export potential remains
untapped due to present production, meeting only the domestic demand.
World demand at present is in excess of 300,000 tonnes and India is in a unique
position to meet a significant part of the same, because of the molasses being
the cheapest in India. Under the circumstances, the indigenous production

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 would have to exceed domestic demand before exports can pick up to a
noticeable extent. However, in this context, it may be noted that plants of
3,000 to 5,00Q TPA capacity are hardly likely to be competitive internationally.
In order to compete in world markets, India would have to plan plants of
above 10,000 TPA capacity with most sophisticated microprocessor based
control of fermentation process. The present price of citric acid in the
indigenous market is around Rs.30-32 per Kg and Rs.14 per Kg in the
international market.

15. Present world capacity is about 4,00,000 tonnes out of which USA has 1,70,000
tonnes and West Europe 1,00,000 tonnes. Some 30 countries produce citric
acid.

Pfizer and Miles Laboratories are the majors, together accounting for 40% of
world capacity. Both have plants in several countries - directly or through
subsidiaries. Japan has no large production. Small quantities are being
produced in Japan by Solid State Fermentation. East Europe's production is
small. USSR produces about 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes yearly.

Other sugarcane producing countries are Brazil, Cuba, Pakistan, China,

Mexico etc. but India is the largest producer.

16. It would be worthwhile to mention that bulk of the production worldwide

is out of beet molasses. The most predominantly used process is the surface
fermentation employed by West Germany and the East European countries.
Citric acid technology absorption becomes all the more desirable and
necessary in view of the fact that India is in a position to manufacture a large
part of the plant and machinery required. Thus, technology imports by
themselves are unlikely to result in any large scale foreign outgo on account
of capital goods, though import of design and drawings of more sophisticated
plant and machinery would be required in order to improve the overall
performance and yields.

17. The present technical research efforts are principally targeted towards the
following areas:

(i) Search for new and different organisms that would perhaps be able
to operate in still cheaper substrates or at least do away with some
part of elaborate media preparation or shorten the fermentation
cycle.
(ii) Search for a continuous fermentation process.
(iii) Search for production techniques, that would reduce operating costs,
including energy consumption.

The Indian Industry still depends upon overseas sources, for high yielding
strains or new process techniques and, to some extent, sophisticated equip-
ment and instruments.
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 It has now become necessary for the industry to adopt new techniques, such
as, clarification of molasses, reduction of B.O.D- of waste with development
of biogas, reduction of energy consumption per unit of produce, etc.

18. Internationally, the process control systems are well advanced and auto-
mated. Computerised control systems are very common. But there is no basic
change since the fifties in the process technology; raw material, micro-
organism remain unaltered. Process cycle time has also not reduced. While
West Germany and East European countries use surface fermentation proc-
ess, elsewhere submerged process is employed. Present research efforts are
directed at finding out new micro-organisms, a continuous process (against
the present batch process) and search for cost reduction. A. Niger continues
to be the most common micro-organism all over the world. Several attempts
have been made for continuous fermentation but no real breakthrough has as
yet been achieved.

19. The best technologies in the world for citric acid are still not available to India.
Offers received are not proven for Indian type of sugarcane molasses.

Only a few countries, majority of them developing countries, produce

sugarcane. Most of the countries having sugarcane do not have large capacity
plants of citric acid based on sugarcane molasses. In the past, a number of
trials have been made to achieve better yields, using Indian cane sugar
molasses but without much success. Considering that indigenous research
efforts have not been able to produce any concrete results, technology
imports are obviously unavoidable.

20. Industrial applications for citric acid are yet to develop. Efforts are required
to be made in the direction of developing industrial applications.

21. A large export potential exists, because Indian molasses are perhaps the
cheapest. Efforts should therefore be made to develop technology suitable
for Indian molasses, for which own R&D is necessary, because most of the
international production is out of beet molasses. Cane molasses supposedly
contain more impurities; need different treatment and handling.

22. As equipment fabrication capability for this industry is well developed within
the country, technology absorption and development is very much desirable.

23. At least one more project of capacity 4,000 to 5,000 TPA is desirable to meet
domestic demand.

24. Solid state fermentation is to be closely examined. It is more suitable for India
and a large potential for this process exists in the country.

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