**4. Conclusion**

Lactic acid has important applications in various industrial sectors such as the chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetics industries, where its demand is steadily increasing. Furthermore, lactic acid is an essential building block for numerous commodity and intermediate biobased chemicals like acrylic acid, lactate esters,

*Lactic Acid Production from Lignocellulosic Biomass DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112739*

1,2-propanediol, pyruvic acid, acetaldehyde, 2,3-pentanedione, ethanedioic acid, and polylactic acid, making it as a suitable alternative to their oil-derived counterparts. The bioconversion processes of converting lignocellulosic biomass into lactic acid need to overcome the following points or challenges: (1) effective pretreatment process to make all C5 and C6 sugars available for the selected microorganism that ferment them into stereospecific (L- or D-) lactic acid, (2) selection of suitable microorganism along with their required substrates and fermentation conditions, and (3) employing the separation and purification of lactic acid from the fermentation broth. The promising method for the industrial production of lactic acid will be of continuous simultaneous saccharification and fermentation in a gypsum-free process using Mg(OH)2 as neutralizer, followed by reactive distillation for purified lactic acid production. The *cradle-to-gate* life cycle assessment model for the biobased lactic acid production process indicated that the about 80–99% of the environmental burdens of most of the environmental impact categories can be reduced compared with its equivalent fossil-based lactic acid, making biobased lactic acid environmentally superior to the fossil-based lactic acid.
