Citric acid, also known as citric acid, is an important organic acid, colorless crystal, odorless, has a strong sour taste, and is easily soluble in water.
You may feel unfamiliar with the term "citric acid", but in fact, it is closely related to our lives.
We will see it in the ingredient lists of many foods, which are natural preservatives and food additives.
Natural citric acid is widely distributed in nature, and natural citric acid is not only found in plants, such as lemons, citrus, pineapples and other fruits, but also in the bones, muscles and blood of animals.
Lemon halved close-up
Doesn't that sound magical?
And through certain artificial means, we can also synthesize citric acid.
The synthetic citric acid is prepared by fermenting sugary substances such as sugar, molasses, starch, and grapes.
Black grapes
The production methods of citric acid can be divided into three types: fruit extraction method; chemical synthesis method; biological fermentation method. At present, the fermentation method is mainly used to produce citric acid.
The use of biological fermentation method to obtain citric acid, activated carbon is an important role.
This production process can use dried potatoes as raw materials, using direct crushing, sizing, liquefaction, deep fermentation of good gas liquid, calcium salt extraction, and finally crystallization and drying to obtain citric acid.
After obtaining the calcium citrate solid, activated carbon is added for decolorization; the role of activated carbon here is to remove the colloidal, protein and decolorization of the calcium citrate solid.
Activated charcoal is a black powdery, granular or pill-shaped amorphous carbon with porous carbon. It has strong adsorption properties, which can adsorb gases, liquids or colloidal solids on its surface; removing colloids, proteins and decolorization of calcium citrate solids takes advantage of this property of activated carbon.