A biosurfactant can be defined as a surfactant compound produced by microorganisms. The biosurfactants have several advantages over chemically synthesized surfactants such as lower toxicity, higher biodegradability, and effectiveness at extreme temperatures or pH values, besides presenting high-surface activity and low-critical micelle concentration values emerging as promising substitutes of the latter (Vaz et al. 2012). In the present moment, the biosurfactants still present high production costs in comparison to the chemically synthesized surfactants. That is mainly the result of the low productivity of the microbial strains and the inefficient methodology of the bioprocessing. The technological improvement of the production process is essential (Kronemberger et al. 2008). In order to decrease the production costs, the scale-up of the whole production process, including upstream and downstream, should be developed.
One of the bottlenecks of the biosurfactant production relies on the...
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de Kronemberger, F.A. (2014). Biosurfactant Production. In: Drioli, E., Giorno, L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Membranes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40872-4_62-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40872-4_62-1
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