Читать книгу Biomolecules from Natural Sources - Группа авторов - Страница 13

The most commonly used surfactants are chemically produced from petroleum, these synthetic derived agents are generally toxic and not biodegradable. This problem motivates the search for more environmentally friendly surfactants, such as biosurfactants produced by microorganisms, which provides a wide range of applications (Santos et al. 2016; Vijayakumar and Saravanan 2015).

Biosurfactants have several advantages over petroleum based surfactants, such as structural diversity, low toxicity, greater biodegradability, the ability to function in wide ranges of pH, temperature and salinity, as well as greater selectivity, lower protein denaturing potency and lower critical micellar concentration (CMC). The wide range of industrial applications include the field of petroleum industry as well as bioremediation, agricultural, food processing, health, chemical, and cosmetic industries (Abdel-Mawgoud and Stephanopoulos 2018; Santos et al. 2016). The following sections present an overview of the most investigated application fields for biosurfactants.