Application and development of malic acid

Malic Acid (MA) is a kind of Dicarboxylic Acid with physiological activity, and its chemical name is 2-Hydroxysuccinic acid. Malic acid is a safe, non-toxic, harmless and edible organic acid, which plays an important role in biological metabolism, disease prevention, research and development of new materials and pharmaceutical carriers, and is widely used in pharmaceutical, chemical, food, biology, materials and other industrial fields.

Malic acid, as a green, non-toxic, highly reactive organic binary carboxylic acid, plays an important role in the metabolism of organisms, research and development of new materials, high value-added development of medicine and chemical industry, and has been recognized by the majority of researchers.

At present, with the rapid development of the industrial field, the development of high performance malic acid is the development trend, especially in the field of mineral adjuster, hyperbranched polymer, fabric anti-wrinkle finishing agent, pH regulator, esterified nanocellulose, non-ionic surfactants. In these fields, the quality control of malic acid mainly focuses on fumaric acid, succinic acid and other related substances as well as the production cost. The production of malic acid by microbial fermentation can meet the requirements of this field. The raw materials of malic acid produced by microbial fermentation can be potato flour, tapioca chips, corn flour, glycerin, cellulose, industrial glucose, etc. It has the advantages of rich raw materials, renewable, cheap and easy to obtain, high efficiency, green and environmental protection, but the yield and purity need to be improved. Malic acid produced by Microbial fermentation should improve screening or adaptive evolution to obtain more renewable resource strains, and improve the yield of malic acid by modifying the original anabolic pathway.

Hydrogel microspheres and bionic adhesives have been developing rapidly in the field of medicine and chemical industry in recent years, which put forward higher requirements for malic acid quality. Besides controlling fumaric acid and succinic acid impurities, they also pay attention to maleic acid, residual ignition, sulfate, arsenic salt and other physical and chemical indexes.

The yeild of malic acid by fermentation is low and there are many by-products, so it has certain limitations to prepare high purity malic acid, which often needs to be purified by chemical method. Chemical preparation of malic acid can use ethyl acetate, acetone, methyl tert-butyl ether, ethanol and other organic solvent recrystallization method, high yield, high purity, but large solvent consumption, waste liquid treatment is difficult. The direction of its development is to explore the suitable malic acid purification process and develop the green solvent.

In the future, with the rapid development of biological engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and other disciplines, it is believed that the research direction of malic acid application will be to develop green and efficient malic acid preparation technology, develop high malic acid additional products, and thus increase the development and utilization of application fields. There is no doubt that with the continuous exploration of malic acid application, malic acid will play a huge market potential and drive greater economic benefits.