Abstract
The biosurfactant surfactin has potential to aid in the recovery of energy resources (oil recovery) or subsurface organic contaminants (environmental remediation). However, high medium and purification costs limit its use in these high-volume applications. In previous work, we showed that surfactin could be produced from an inexpensive low-solids potato process effluent with minimal amendments or pretreatments. Previous research has also shown that surfactin can be both produced in Bacillus subtilis cultures and recovered by foam fractionation in an airlift reactor. Results using both purified potato starch and unamended low-solids potato process effluent as substrates for surfactin production indicate that the process is oxygen limited and that recalcitrant indigenous bacteria in the potato process effluent hamper continuous surfactin production. The research reported here features the use of a chemostat operated in batch mode for producing surfactin with concomitant use of antifoam to prevent surfactant loss. The antifoam did not interfere with surfactin recovery by acid precipitation or its efficacy. Initial trials took about 48 h to produce 0.9 g/L of surfactin from potato process effluent. Increasing the oxygen mass transfer by increasing the stirring speed and adding a baffle decreased production time to 12–24 h and produced about 0.6 g/L of surfactin from two different potato-processing facilities.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Thompson, D. N., Fox, S. L., and Bala, G. A. (2000), Appl. Biochem. Biotechnol. 84–86, 917–930.
Thompson, D. N., Fox, S. L., and Bala, G. A. (2001), Appl. Biochem. Biotechnol. 91–93, 487–501.
Rosenberg, E. (1986), CRC Crit. Rev. Biotechnol. 3(3), 109–132.
Arima, K., Kakinuma, A., and Tamura, G. (1968), Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 31, 488–494.
Cooper, D. G., McDonald, C. R., Duff, S. J. B., and Kosaric, N. (1981), Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 42, 408–412.
Besson, F. and Michel, G. (1992), Biotechnol. Lett. 14(11), 1013–1018.
Georgiou, G., Lin, S.-Y., and Sharma, M. M. (1992), Bio/Technology 10, 60–65.
Davis, D. A., Lynch, H. C., and Varley, J. (2001), Enzyme Microb. Technol. 28, 346–353.
Noah, K. S., Fox, S. L., Bruhn, D. R, Thompson, D. N., and Bala, G. A. (2002), Appl. Biochem. Biotechnol. 98–100, 803–813.
Gerhardt, P., Murray, R. G. E., Wood, W. A., and Krieg, N. R., eds. (1994), Methods for General and Molecular Bacteriology., Chapter 22 Chemical Analysis, L. Daniels, R. S. Hanson and A. Phillips. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC, pp. 518–519.
Herd, M. D., Lassahn, G. D., Thomas, C. P., Bala, G. A., and Eastman, S. L. (1992), Proceedings of the DOE Eighth Symposium on Enhanced Oil Recovery, Society of Petroleum Engineers/Department of Energy, April 22–24, Tulsa, OK. Vol#2. Paper SPE/DOE 24206, pp. 513–517.
Lin, S.-C. and Jiang, H.-J. (1997), Biotechnol. Techniques 11(6), 413–416.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Humana Press Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Noah, K.S., Bruhn, D.F., Bala, G.A. (2005). Surfactin Production from Potato Process Effluent by Bacillus subtilis in a Chemostat. In: Davison, B.H., Evans, B.R., Finkelstein, M., McMillan, J.D. (eds) Twenty-Sixth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals. ABAB Symposium. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-991-2_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-991-2_41
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-697-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-59259-991-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)