Lactic acid is a raw material that is widely used in food industry as preservatives in meat, vegetables or canned fish. In the pharmaceutical
industry is used as raw material for the manufacture of drugs. Lactic acid can be made from natural materials such as lignocellulosic waste one of them is cocoa shell waste. Indonesia is number three cocoa-producing country in the world. 70?cao fruit components such as pod husk are composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, so it has the potential to be converted into lactic acid. In this study been the conventional method to determine the overall process in order to know what parts need to be further developed to become a method more effective and efficient. The conventional method is done through several processes, namely the delignification, hydrolysis and fermentation using microorganisms. This study aims to determine the extent of the potential for cocoa pod husk waste to be converted into lactic acid. The results showed that the pod husks delignification with sodium hydroxide solution reaches optimum at a concentration of 6% which results in lower levels of lignin from 30.46 to 24.64%. The process of acid hydrolysis of the pod husks achieve optimum conditions at a concentration of 2.0%, a temperature of 120°C and a 30 minute production of glucose at 32 g/L. Glucose is the result of acid hydrolysis produces lactic acid by 13.268 g/L.
