Description:
Surfactants are very important in industry. The cost of commercial
surfactant production is still high and the surfactant demand is
constantly increasing. Microbial production of surfactant known as
biosurfactant shows commercial potency. Utilization of Bacillus sp.
strain on glucose fermentation for biosurfactant production was
then studied. This type of microbe was isolated from soil con-
taminated with palm oil. The selection of the strain was based on
its ability to form emulsifying zone around the colony and its
capability to grow compared with those for commercial bacteria of
Bacillus pumilus JCM 2508. The results showed a potentially pro-
mising strain with high biosurfactant yields and low surface ten-
sion. For further scale-up development, the microbe performance
in a fermentor was compared with those in a flask and a proposed
model to predict the kinetic profiles of cell mass, biosurfactant and
surface tension were also described. The data presented here are
related to the research article entitled “Kinetic study and modeling
of biosurfactant production using Bacillus sp.” (Heryani and Putra,
2017)