Continuous production of biosurfactant with foam fractionation

✍ Scribed by Chien-Yen Chen; Simon C. Baker; Richard C. Darton

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 327 KB
• Volume: 81
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0268-2575
• DOI: 10.1002/jctb.1624

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A glucose‐limited chemostat was used to determine the growth parameters of BBK006 for continuous production of the biosurfactant surfactin. The continuous cultivation exhibited low maintenance metabolism (m = 0.39 mmol~glucose~ g~bacteria~^−1^ h^−1^) and high molar growth yield ($Y_{x/S}^{\max} = 30.8$ g~bacteria~ mol~glucose~^−1^). It was found that the surfactin production rate in continuous culture was not only a function of dilution rate but also varied with the initial concentration of glucose in the feed. A high steady state concentration of surfactin (18 mg L^−1^) was maintained in the culture at a dilution rate of 0.2 h^−1^ when glucose concentration in the feed was 0.25 g L^−1^. This is the first demonstration of continuous surfactin production and recovery using glucose as a carbon source. The production of surfactin is known to be related to the age of the microorganisms and a simple mathematical model has been constructed to show how the age‐related production can be quantified. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry