Biosurfactant Synergies with Enzymes

Abstract: Biosurfactants (surfactants formed through fermentation processes rather than being synthesized) have shown themselves to be quite mild to skin and other tested organisms, yet effective in cleaning processes.  From a purely whimsical point of view, one might say that bio-derived materials are gentle to other biologically developed materials.  If one takes that consideration somewhat seriously, it would be expected that laundry detergent enzymes would perform better and suffer less degradation in the presence of biosurfactants as opposed to synthetic surfactants.  Further, one might be inclined to test this idea and be surprised by the results.

This study examined the performance of selected biosurfactants in conjunction with detergent enzymes as compared to more traditional enzyme based laundry detergents.  Positive synergies in performance were noted and this presentation will discuss those observations.