- The discovery of citric acid has been credited to the 8th century Islamic alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber). Medieval scholars in Europe were aware of the acidic nature of lemon and lime juices
- Citric acid was first isolated in 1784 by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who crystallized it from lemon juice.
- Industrial-scale citric acid production began in 1890 based on the Italian citrus fruit industry.In 1893, C. Wehmer discovered Penicillium mold could produce citric acid from sugar.
- In 1917, the American food chemist James Currie discovered certain strains of the mold Aspergillus niger could be efficient citric acid producers, and 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 solutions. 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.