A critical review on various feedstocks as sustainable substrates for biosurfactants production: a way towards cleaner production

Abstract

The quest for a chemical surfactant substitute has been fuelled by increased environmental awareness. The benefits that biosurfactants present like biodegradability, and biocompatibility over their chemical and synthetic counterparts has contributed immensely to their popularity and use in various industries such as petrochemicals, mining, metallurgy, agrochemicals, fertilizers, beverages, cosmetics, etc. With the growing demand for biosurfactants, researchers are looking for low-cost waste materials to use them as substrates, which will lower the manufacturing costs while providing waste management services as an add-on benefit. The use of low-cost substrates will significantly reduce the cost of producing biosurfactants. This paper discusses the use of various feedstocks in the production of biosurfactants, which not only reduces the cost of waste treatment but also provides an opportunity to profit from the sale of the biosurfactant. Furthermore, it includes state-of-the-art information about employing municipal solid waste as a sustainable feedstock for biosurfactant production, which has not been simultaneously covered in many published literatures on biosurfactant production from different feedstocks. It also addresses the myriad of other issues associated with the processing of biosurfactants, as well as the methods used to address these issues and perspectives, which will move society towards cleaner production.

Valorization of agro-industrial wastes for biorefinery process and circular bioeconomy: A critical review

“…Agro-industrial waste materials possess a high concentration of soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium helpful for enhancing soil fertility and yield (Beesigamukama et al, 2021;Mohanty et al, 2021). They serve as a better alternative to chemical fertilizers in minimizing environmental pollution and managing sustainable agricultural soil (Adesra et al, 2021;Varjani et al, 2021b).…”

“…Bio-based energy is renewable energy obtained from living organisms mainly from agricultural wastes (Anwar et al, 2014;Koyande et al, 2020;Yaashikaa et al, 2019). Wastes from the agricultural sector can be utilized to produce many value-added products such as generating power, biofuel production and generation of biogas (Mohanty et al, 2021). Various substrates possess many properties in them for producing different types of products.…”

Agricultural Waste and Wastewater as Feedstock for Bioelectricity Generation Using Microbial Fuel Cells: Recent Advances

“…Generally, agro-food processing waste is comprised of a large number of organic constituents, which can be either in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state. For example, carbohydrates, fat, etc., present in wastewater, indicate the need for the maximum oxygen demand for biodegradation [67]. Various solids in the wastewater are known to halt or reduce the MFCs efficiency.…”

Microbial Biosurfactant: A New Frontier for Sustainable Agriculture and Pharmaceutical Industries

“…This makes surfactants one of the most versatile chemicals for industrial processes [7]. The most commonly used surfactants are of chemical origin, but their toxic nature, low degradation rate, and high persistence power limit their frequent use in the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries [8]. Surfactants of microbial origins have several advantages over synthetic or chemical surfactants: higher temperature tolerance, stability in pH variation, high salinity tolerance, higher degradation rate, less toxicity, and better selectivity [9,10].…”

“…Halomonas venusta PHKT GlycerolSurfactin, Pumilacidin, and Bios-PHKT have a critical micelle concentration (C.M.C.) of 125 mg L −1 and showed a high steadiness against a broad spectrum of salinity (0-120 g L −1 NaCl), temperature (4-121 • C), and pH values(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12) [107]. …”