Review on Biosurfactant Production and its Application

Abstract

Biosurfactants are surface active compounds released by microorganisms. There are several known microbe involve for the production of biosurfactants but exploration of potential biosurfactant producer is need of hours to accelerate its economic production for industrial use. These compounds are mainly classified according to their molecular weight, physico-chemical properties and mode of action. They are eco-friendly, easily biodegradable and non-toxic materials. Numerous application of biosurfactants is being practiced with several advantages in laundry cleaning, food processing, cosmetic industry, petroleum, microbial enhance oil recovery, agriculture and medical. It can be produced through use of cheaper, renewable substrates as potential carbon sources come from various industries such as agricultural wastes (sugars, molasses, plant oils, oil wastes, starchy substances and lactic whey), dairy industry whey, distillery wastes, animal fat and oil industries. This leads to greater possibility of economical bio-surfactant production and eco-friendly management of unwanted industrial wastes. Keeping all above merits, the information about the extraction of the different microbial biosurfactants from the cell-free supernatant using the solvent extraction procedure and the qualitative and quantitative analysis has been discussed.