In this study, the lignocellulosic residue coffee pulp was used as carbon source in fermentative l(+)-lactic acid production using Bacillus coagulans. After thermo-chemical treatment at 121 °C for 30 min in presence of 0.18 mol L−1 H2SO4 and following an enzymatic digestion using Accellerase 1500 carbon-rich hydrolysates were obtained. Two different coffee pulp materials with comparable biomass composition were used, but sugar concentrations in hydrolysates showed variations. The primary sugars were (g L−1) glucose (20–30), xylose (15–25), sucrose (5–11) and arabinose (0.7–10). Fermentations were carried out at laboratory (2 L) and pilot (50 L) scales in presence of 10 g L−1 yeast extract. At pilot scale carbon utilization and lactic acid yield per gram of sugar consumed were 94.65% and 0.78 g g−1, respectively. The productivity was 4.02 g L−1 h−1. Downstream processing resulted in a pure formulation containing 937 g L−1 l(+)-lactic acid with an optical purity of 99.7%.
