Biosurfactants production from cheese whey

摘要

Biosurfactants are molecules that exhibitpronounced surface and emulsifying activities,produced by a variety of microorganisms. A host ofinteresting features of biosurfactants, such as higherbiodegradability, lower toxicity, and effectiveness atextremes of temperature, pH and salinity; have led toa wide range of potential applications in the fieldsof oil recovery, environmental bioremediation, foodprocessing and medicine. In spite of the immensepotential of biosurfactants, their use still remainslimited, mainly due to their high production andextraction costs, low yields in production processes and lack of information on their toxicity towards human systems. However, theuse of cheaper substrates and optimal growth and production conditionscoupled with novel and efficient multistep downstream processing methods andthe use of recombinant and mutant hyper producing microbial strains canmake biosurfactant production economically feasible. Often, the amount andtype of a raw material can contribute considerably to the production cost; it isestimated that raw materials account for 10 to 30% of the total productioncosts in most biotechnological processes. Thus, to reduce this cost it isdesirable to use low-cost raw materials. One possibility explored extensively isthe use of cheap and agro-based raw materials as substrates for biosurfactantproduction. A variety of cheap raw materials, including plant-derived oils, oilwastes, starchy substances, cheese whey and distillery wastes have beenreported to support biosurfactant production. Future biosurfactant researchshould, therefore, be more focused on the economics of biosurfactantproduction processes, particularly through the use of alternative low-costfermentative media. This review looks at the future perspectives of large-scaleprofitable production of biosurfactants.