Production, recovery and purification of surfactin by Bacillus subtilis using cane molasses as substrate
Biosurfactant, surfactin, sugarcane molasse, extraction, recovery.
The biosurfactants are drawing attention of both academy and industry by showing advantages mainly when compared to the chemical surfactants since they can be produced using renewable resources by fermentation. Among the different classes of biosurfactants lipopeptides outstand by their antibiotic activities, mainly the biosurfactant known as surfactin. Due to its properties it has been used in many fields such as bioremediation, biology, medicine and so on. However, the high cost and low yield involved in surfactin's production has limited its commercial use. To overcome these bottlenecks, it becomes necessary to use techniques that have a low operating cost. In this sense, the solvent sublation (SS) has been used in several areas as a soft separation technique in which active surface compounds are adsorbed on the surface of bubbles. The flotation complexation extraction (FCE) is an improved type of SS, which has great potential in the separation and recovery of biomolecules, whose advantages include low organic solvent dosage, high separation efficiency, simple operation and low environmental impact. In this context, the present study has the objective of evaluating the production of surfactin byBacillus subtilis UFPEDA 438 using sugarcane molasse as substrate, as well as studying FCE as a separation technique in the recovery and purification of surfactin.