Biosurfactants: Production and Applications

Great emphasis has recently been given to the environmental impacts caused by chemical surfactants due to their toxicity and difficulty in being degraded in the environment [1]. Increasing environmental concerns, the advance in biotechnology and the emergence of more stringent laws have led to biosurfactants being a potential alternative to the chemical surfac‐ tants available on the market [2, 3]. Although biosurfactants have promising use in bioreme‐ diation processes, their industrial scale production is currently difficult due to high rawmaterial costs, high processing costs and low manufacturing output [3]. As a result, the current research challenges are to increase the yield and to reduce the cost of raw materials [4].