Itaconic Acid

The application of itaconic acid copolymers covers various fields, including solvents, coatings, and binders. Itaconate is secreted into the fermentation broth. These findings might give rise to more advanced metabolic engineering strategies in the future, though they do not yet offer an advantage over the conventional pathway. Citrate can be efficiently converted into itaconate with two additional biochemical steps. From an industrial point of view, the fermentation technology for itaconic acid with A. terreus is established and can be regarded as rather mature. Itaconic acid was first produced by Pfizer in 1945, followed by Iwata Chemicals in 1970, Rhodia in 1995, and Cargill in 1996. For comparison, the report of the US Department of Energy assumed in 2004 that the fermentative product needs to achieve a cost position of about 0.55 US$ per kg, which is hardly possible if the maximum molar yield is taken into consideration.