Citric Acid Production Using Wheat Bran by Aspergillus niger

This study aimed to obtain a local isolation of Aspergillus niger and then studied its ability to produce citric acid from raw materials available locally using solid state fermentation. Six local isolates were collected from different sources including some samples of the damaged fruits such as grapefruit, oranges and sindi. Wheat bran was used as a raw material or as culture medium for the production of citric acid from the collected isolates. The conditions for citric acid production were determined by humidity percentage of 1: 1 (water: culture medium), temperature of 28° C, pH 4 and inoculum dose with 5 × 10⁶ spore/ml and for 3 days of incubation. The orange was the best model for citric acid production with a concentration of 12.8 mg/ml. In this study the citric acid was diagnosed by using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) technique, and it was found that the concentration of citric acid after three days of incubation was 3.662 mg/ml