H Amani,
Volume 14, Issue 4 (6-2015)
Abstract
In this research, the ability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa NP2to produce rhamnolipid biosurfactant was investigated. Rhamnolipid has various applications in oil industry including cleaning oil sludge filters, cleaning oil storage tanks and biological treatment of oil wastes.The purpose of this paper was optimization of biosurfactant production for reduction of costs using taguchi experimental design methods. Source of carbon, salt concentration, phosphorus concentration and nitrogen concentration at three levels were investigated. The best condition for biosurfactant production was observed when sucrose was used as carbon source, 50 g/l Nacl as salt source, 6.75 g/l NaH2PO4 as phosphorus source, and 1g/l (NH4)2SO4 as nitrogen source. The highest rhamnoliopd production among different experiments was 2.8 g/l. Also the evaluation of emulsification index (E24) of the produced rhamnolipid was studied and the emulsification index value of 80% was reached for crude oil (API=34).
