Industrial-scale citric acid production first began in 1890 based on the Italian citrus fruit industry, where

the juice was treated with hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) to precipitate calcium citrate, which was
isolated and converted back to the acid using diluted sulfuric acid.[14] In 1893, C. Wehmer discovered
Penicillium mold could produce citric acid from sugar.[citation needed] However, microbial production
of citric acid did not become industrially important until World War I disrupted Italian citrus exports.

In 1917, American food chemist James Currie discovered that certain strains of the mold Aspergillus
niger could be efficient citric acid producers,[15] and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer began
industrial-level production using this technique two years later, followed by Citrique Belge in 1929. In
this production technique, which is still the major industrial route to citric acid used today, cultures of A.
niger are fed on a sucrose or glucose-containing medium to produce citric acid. The source of sugar is
corn steep liquor, molasses, hydrolyzed corn starch, or other inexpensive, sugary solution.[16] After the
mold is filtered out of the resulting solution, citric acid is isolated by precipitating it with calcium
hydroxide to yield calcium citrate salt, from which citric acid is regenerated by treatment with sulfuric
acid, as in the direct extraction from citrus fruit juice.

In 1977, a patent was granted to Lever Brothers for the chemical synthesis of citric acid starting either
from aconitic or isocitrate (also called alloisocitrate) calcium salts under high pressure conditions; this
produced citric acid in near quantitative conversion under what appeared to be a reverse, non-
enzymatic Krebs cycle reaction.[17]

Global production was in excess of 2,000,000 tons in 2018.[18] More than 50% of this volume was
produced in China. More than 50% was used as an acidity regulator in beverages, some 20% in other
food applications, 20% for detergent applications, and 10% for applications other than food, such as
cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and in the chemical industry.[14]