ABSTRACT
Biosurfactants are a heterogeneous group of microbial metabolites and, therefore, exhibit vastly different physical properties. Especially with respect to foaming properties, reduction of surface tension, and emulsication capacities, this has consequences for handling biosurfactant fermentations in bioreactors. For example, the biosurfactants rhamnolipid, surfactin, and mannosylerythritol lipids can be grouped into high-foaming biosurfactants, whereas sophorolipids are low-foaming biosurfactants (Rau et al. 2005; Hirata et al. 2009; Müller et al. 2010).
