Abstract
Over the last twenty years, some hydrocarbon-utilizing microorgainisms have been found to produce emulsifying materials, namely, biosurfactants. Biosurfactants have certain structural characteristics which are not seen in industrial synthetic surfactants. Application of biosurfactants has been attempted in a wide variety fields, including the tertiary petroleum recovery, pollution-free removing agents, hydrocarbon fermentation, industrial surfactants, and so on.
It is explained that a general outline on the current situation of research and development of these biosurfactants, according to the classification depending on the structures of their hydrophilic moieties.
And, it is explained that results of our research and development on a sophorolipid, whose derivertive has found commercial utility as a skin moisturizer.
