Lactic acid production from food waste hydrolysate by Lactobacillus pentosus: Focus on nitrogen supplementation, initial sugar concentration, pH, and fed‐batch fermentation

Lactic acid production from food waste via fermentation is environmentally sustainable. However, the characteristics of food waste fermentation to produce lactic acid are not well understood due to the complexity of food waste. This study aims to understand the effects of key variables on the characteristics of food waste fermentation to maximize lactic acid production. Food waste was enzymatically hydrolyzed and fermented by Lactobacillus pentosus. Key fermentation variables, including nitrogenous nutrient supplementation, initial sugar concentration, and pH, were investigated in batch fermentation to unveil their effects on fermentation titer, yield, and productivity. The results showed that supplementation of 0.25% (w/v%) yeast extract and peptone to the food waste fermentation media significantly improved fermentation titer and productivity, but further increase in the supplementation level did not improve fermentation. Increasing the initial sugar concentration from 40 g/L to 100 g/L increased the fermentation titer from 41.0 g/L to 93.0 g/L and productivity from 0.34 g/L/h to 0.76 g/L/h. pH 6.0 was the optimal pH for the fermentation. At the optimal conditions, food waste fermentation resulted in the highest fermentation titer, yield, and productivity of 106.7 g/L, 1.12 g/g, and 3.09 g/L/h, respectively. The high fermentation yield of 1.12 g/g might be explained by the extra lactic acid production from unidentified compounds in food waste hydrolysates. By applying fed‐batch fermentation, the lactic acid concentration reached 157.0 g/L with a yield and overall productivity of 0.92 g/g and 2.0 g/L/h, respectively. Based on the mass balance, a total of 251 kg lactic acid was produced from 1000 kg food waste. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Food waste is one of the largest municipal solid wastes in the US, and most food waste ends up in landfills, causing significant economic losses and environmental concerns. In this study, we developed a fermentation process to convert food waste into biorenewable lactic acid and demonstrated that food waste is a superior feedstock for fermentation due to its embedded nutrients. Moreover, due to the embedded nutrients in food waste, the supplementation of yeast extract and peptone to fermentation can be reduced by over 50%, which can reduce the operating cost of lactic acid fermentation on an industrial scale.