ABSTRACT
Chemically synthesized surfactants, derived from either petrochemical or oleochemical sources, are important constituents of many everyday products and are integral to numerous industrial, agricultural, and food-related processes (Desai and Banat 1997). The industrial demand for surfactants is high (more than 13 million tons per annum), but in view of their environmental sustainability, many companies are trying to replace some or all of their chemical surfactant components with similar compounds of natural origin principally produced by microorganisms from sustainable feedstock (Marchant and Banat 2012a). These molecules, commonly known as biosurfactants and bioemulsiers, have advantages over chemical surfactants some of which are biodegradability, low toxicity, biocompatibility, and digestibility in addition to improved stability at relatively high temperature and in adverse environments with the possibility of being produced from cheap raw materials (Makkar et al. 2011). Another striking advantage is the ability to modify their chemical composition through genetic engineering or the use of biological and biochemical techniques to alter metabolic end products, thus tailoring them to meet specic functional requirements.
