Bacterial Biosurfactants

Book excerpt: This new volume offers comprehensive coverage of bacterial biosurfactants, the competitive new area of research that has exciting potential application in agriculture and petroleum exploration. The book helps readers to understand the synthesis of biosurfactants by some specific bacteria, their culture, and extraction toward use in bioremediation and enhanced crude oil recovery. The volume covers the gamut of topics in bacterial biosurfactants in nanostructure, including their comparison to synthetic surfactants, their interaction with microorganisms, and their biochemistry, characterization, genetics of production, bioremedial effects, and more. The volume also explores the myriad uses of bacterial biosurfactants, including in laundry detergents, cosmetics, food production, petroleum, agriculture, medicine and therapeutics, environment, metallurgy, etc. Attention to biosurfactants has been gradually increasing in recent years due to the possibility of their production through fermentation technology and their potential applications in environmental protection. Despite their numerous advantages over synthetic chemical surfactants, biosurfactants have been unable to compete with chemically synthesized surfactants due to high production costs in relation to the inefficient bioprocessing techniques, poor strain productivity, and use of costly substrates. This volume helps to identify the factors that need to be addressed to reduce the cost of production of biosurfactants.