I incubated my bacteria for biosurfactant production with olive oil. after centrifuging the bacteria out, I noticed some oil residue on the surface of the supernatant, trapped with the crude biosurfactant. I want to remove the oil but I have no idea how to
For the extraction of Biosurfactant in media cultivated with hydrophobic oils such as olive oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil e.t.c, the cell-free supernatants can be mixed for sequential washing with organic solvents such as ethyl acetate, n-hexane, methanol and followed by subsequent rotary evaporation. The crude Biosurfactant could then be dried, weighed and stored at -20.
Lyophilization is another method, but there is a chance of the oils being co-precipitated with the Biosurfactant of interest.
Hello,
I think you can try to withdraw the upper layer of oil by pipette and then use hexane to extract the residual oil, because hexane is more apolar than the other solvent and so it can be used without eluting biosurfactant (less apolar). Therefore, oil free supernatant can be extracted with ethyl acetate, chloroform/methanol:2/1 v/v as a suitable solvent and evaporated to dryness.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Engineering
- Petroleum Engineering
- Oil