Abstract
Lactic acid (LA) is an organic acid found in many products of natural origin. The first reports on isolation of lactic acid from milk can be found in as early as 1780 and the solidification by self-esterification some years later. Lactic acid can be manufactured by chemical synthesis or carbohydrate fermentation. And, lactic acid can be purified either by precipitation of metal lactates followed by a neutralizing reaction with sulfuric acid or by esterification with alcohol, distillation and hydrolysis of the formed ester, or by electro-dialysis. Nowadays, lactic acid based polymers, a good alternative for substituting conventional plastic produced from petroleum oil because of low emission of carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming, have been widely used.
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© 2010 Tsinghua University Press, Beijing and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Ren, J. (2010). Lactic Acid. In: Biodegradable Poly(Lactic Acid): Synthesis, Modification, Processing and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17596-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17596-1_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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