Microbial Biosurfactants – The New Age in Surfactant Science

Research on environmentally friendly surfactants has led to the development of compounds from microbial sources. Produced from oil feeds and glucose, biosurfactants do not require further derivatization. This makes them an attractive option for home and personal care manufacturers catering to green cleansing solutions. While there has been more than five decades of research on biosurfactants, their commercial availability has been progressively slow due to their production and purification cost. In this brief review, we have focused on commercially available biosurfactants and their properties to serve as ready references for formulation scientists.