Improvement of l-lactic acid productivity from sweet sorghum juice by repeated batch fermentation coupled with membrane separation.

In order to efficiently produce l-lactic acid from non-food feedstocks, sweet sorghum juice (SSJ), which is rich of fermentable sugars, was directly used for l-lactic acid fermentation by Lactobacillus rhamnosus LA-04-1. A membrane integrated repeated batch fermentation (MIRB) was developed for productivity improvement. High-cell-density fermentation was achieved with a final cell density (OD620) of 42.3, and the CCR effect was overcomed. When SSJ (6.77gL(-1) glucose, 4.51gL(-1) fructose and 50.46gL(-1) sucrose) was used as carbon source in MIRB process, l-lactic acid productivity was increased significantly from 1.45gL(-1)h(-1) (batch 1) to 17.55gL(-1)h(-1) (batch 6). This process introduces an effective way to produce l-lactic acid from SSJ.