Utilization of agroindustrial waste for biosurfactant production by native bacteria from chiapas

In this work, two agro-industrial wastes, namely Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) and Coffee Wastewater (CW) have been used as the carbon source for the production of biosurfactants, due to their low cost and high availability. Biosurfactant-producing bacterial isolates from the Mexican state of Chiapas were used. The selected biosurfactant-producer strains were evaluated in a liquid medium with 2% (v/v) of WCO as the carbon source. The assay was conducted in an Erlenmeyer flask containing 300 mL aliquots of mineral salt media (MSM) + residue and incubated at 100 rpm at room temperature for 96 hours. The biosurfactant produced in the samples reduced the surface tension from 50 to 30-29 mN/m. Strains A and 83 showed the maximum emulsification index at 58-59%. Strain A showed the highest biosurfactant yield with a production of 3.7 g/L in comparison with strains B, 83 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC27853. Our results suggest that the biosurfactant produced by strain A has great potential in the treatment of wastewater with a high content of fatty acids, and of soils contaminated by pesticides or oil hydrocarbons.