biosurfactants in industry - iupac.pdfVIP

Pure Appl. Chern., Vol. 64, No. 11, pp. 1731-1737,1992, Printed in Great Britain. @ 1992 IUPAC Biosurfactants in industry N. KOSARIC Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B9 ABSTRACT Biosurfactants (Microbial Surface Active Agents) have become recently an important product of biotechnology for industrial and medical applications. Thereason for their popularity, as high value microbial products, is primarily in their specific action, low toxicity, relative ease of preparation and widespread applicaility. They can be used as emulsifiers, de-emulsifiers, wetting agents, spreading agents, foaming agents, functional food ingredients and detergents in various industrial sectors such as . Petroleum and Petrochemicals, Organic Chemicals, Foods and Beverages, Cosmetics and Pharmaceuticals, Mining and Metallurgy, Agrochemicals and Fertilizers, Environmental Control and Management, and many others. INTRODUCTION The unique properties of biosurfactants allow their use and possible replacement of chemically synthesized surfactants in a great number of industrial operations. Surfactants are used by many industries and one could easily say that there is almost no modern industrial operation where properties of surfaces and surface active agents are not exploited. The potential application of biosurfactants in industries is also a reality. There are many advantages of biosurfactants as compared to their chemically synthesized counterparts. Some of those are: Biodegradability