Abstract

Biosurfactant or surface active components are produced by many different microorganisms. Biosurfactants are amphiphilic molecules with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic (generally hydrocarbon) moieties that partition preferentially a within the interface between fluid phases with some other degrees of polarity and hydrogen bonding including oil/water or air/water interfaces. These properties render surfactants able to reducing surface and interfacial tension and forming microemulsion where hydrocarbons can solubilize in water or where water can solubilize in hydrocarbons, the majority of surfactants have gained importance in the fields of enhanced oil recovery, environmental bioremediation, food processing and pharmaceuticals. However, large-scale production of these molecules has not been realized as a result of low yields in production processes and high recovery and purification costs. This review article represents a classification of biosurfactant in addition to their microbial origin and effect of some nutrition and environmental factor for high production of biosurfactant. The nitrogen, carbon sources and environmental factors can make a difference key to the regulating biosurfactants synthesis Fascination with microbial surfactants have been steadily increasing recently because of advantages over the chemical surfactants for example environmentally friendly nature, lower toxicity, higher biodegradability, higher selectivity and specific gravity at extreme temperature, pH and salinity. For this reason the demand of biosurfactant are increasing day by day.

Keywords:

Biosurfactant, carbon sources, classification, environmental factors, nitrogen sources, production,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.