The production and manufacturing of PLA (polylactic acid) starts with renewable plant resources, and its core process includes four links: raw material pretreatment, lactic acid fermentation, polymerization reaction and post-processing. Technological breakthroughs in each link are driving industrial upgrading. On the raw material side, traditional processes mostly relied on single grain raw materials, but now a diversified raw material system has gradually taken shape. The efficient utilization technology of agricultural wastes such as straw and potato starch has achieved breakthroughs, which not only reduces the dependence on staple food resources, but also reduces the raw material cost by about 15%, while reducing the environmental pressure caused by agricultural waste disposal.

The innovation in the microbial fermentation link has become the key to increasing production capacity. The application of a new generation of genetic engineering strains has increased the lactic acid conversion rate from the traditional 85% to more than 92%, and shortened the fermentation cycle by nearly 20%. The intelligent transformation of fermenters has also achieved remarkable results. By real-time monitoring and automatically adjusting key parameters such as pH value, temperature and dissolved oxygen, precise control of the fermentation process is realized, the stability of product purity is greatly improved, and the defective rate is reduced to less than 1%.

The upgrading of polymerization process focuses on improving product performance and production efficiency. The traditional melt polycondensation method has the problems of low molecular weight and insufficient performance uniformity, while the popularization and application of new solid-phase polymerization technology has increased the molecular weight of PLA by 30%, and key mechanical performance indicators such as tensile strength have been significantly optimized. At the same time, the popularization of continuous polymerization production lines has replaced the traditional batch production, shortening the production cycle from 72 hours to 48 hours, and the annual production capacity of a single line has been increased to 10,000 tons.

The low-carbon transformation of the production process has become an industry consensus. By introducing clean energy such as photovoltaics and wind power to replace traditional thermal power, combined with the transformation of waste heat recovery systems, the unit energy consumption of production has decreased by more than 25%, and the carbon emission per ton of PLA has decreased by about 400 kg compared with ten years ago. In addition, the resource treatment technology of fermentation wastewater has achieved breakthroughs. After treatment by multi-stage anaerobic fermentation and membrane separation processes, it not only meets the discharge standards, but also recovers biogas for energy supply, realizing the recycling of "turning waste into energy".

At present, PLA production and manufacturing is moving towards the direction of "diversified raw materials, intelligent processes and low-carbon energy". These technological innovations not only improve the market competitiveness of PLA materials, but also lay a solid foundation for the large-scale development of the bio-based materials industry.