Citric Acid Anhydrous USP 23

Citric Acid Anhydrous USP 23

Citric acid is an organic acid found a variety of fruits and vegetables, but it is most concentrated in lemons and limes. It is a natural preservative and is also used to add an acidic (sour) taste to foods and soft drinks. In biochemistry, it is important as an intermediate in the citric acid cycle or Krebs cycle (see last paragraph) and therefore occurs in the metabolism of almost all living things. Excess citric acid is readily metabolized and eliminated from the body. Citric acid is an antioxidant. It is also used as an environmentally friendly cleaning agent.

Citric acid is generally recognized as safe (Gras) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stipulating use according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).

In the International community Citric acid (E330) is recognized as safe by the European Community as Permitted Food Additives and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). They allocated Acceptable Daily Intakes (ADI's) of “Not Specified", again relying on usage limited by Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) is an international scientific expert committee that is administered jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It has been meeting since 1956.

A process which is still in use today to produce citric acid is cultures of Aspergillus niger are fed on sucrose to produce citric acid. After the mold is filtered out of the resulting solution, citric acid is isolated by precipitating it with lime (calcium hydroxide) to yield calcium citrate salt, from which citric acid is regenerated by treatment with sulfuric acid.

At room temperature, citric acid is a white crystalline powder. It can exist either in an anhydrous (water-free) form, or as a monohydrate. The anhydrous form crystallizes from hot water, while the monohydrate forms when citric acid is crystallized from cold water. The monohydrate can be converted to the anhydrous form by heating it above 74 °C. Citric acid also dissolves in absolute (anhydrous) ethanol (76 parts of citric acid per 100 parts of ethanol) at 15 degrees Celsius.

Citric acid is one of a series of compounds involved in the physiological oxidation of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to carbon dioxide and water.

This series of chemical reactions is central to nearly all metabolic reactions, and is the source of two-thirds of the food-derived energy in higher organisms. It was discovered by the Sir Hans Adolf Krebs. Krebs received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery. The series of reactions is known by various names, including the citric acid cycle, the Krebs cycle, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle (or TCA cycle).

References:
1. Wikipedia
2. World Health Organization
3. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
4. Grenby TH, Phillips A, Desai T. Mistry M1 1989 Laboratory Studies of Dental Properties of Soft Drinks. Brit. J. Nutr. 62, 451 464.
5. Soft Drinks Industry Conference, Leatherhead Food RA, 10 11 September 1996.
6. Grenby TH. 1996 Lessening Dental Erosive Potential by Product Modification. Euro. J. Oral Science, 104 211 - 228

 

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SKU CITRIC-ACID
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