Microbial biosurfactants have attracted the attention of researchers and companies for the last decades, as they are considered promising candidates to replace chemical surfactants in numerous applications. Although in the last years, considerable advances were performed regarding strain engineering and the use of low-cost substrates in order to reduce their production costs, one of the main bottlenecks is their production at industrial scale. Conventional aerobic biosurfactant production processes result in excessive foaming, due to the use of high agitation and aeration rates necessary to increase dissolved oxygen concentration to allow microbial growth and biosurfactant production. Different approaches have been studied to overcome this problem, although with limited success. A not widely explored alternative is the development of foam-free processes through the anaerobic growth of biosurfactant-producing microorganisms. Surfactin, produced by Bacillus subtilis, is the most widely studied lipopeptide biosurfactant, and the most powerful biosurfactant known so far. Bacillus licheniformis strains produce lichenysin, a lipopeptide biosurfactant which structure is similar to surfactin. However, despite its extraordinary surface-active properties and potential applications, lichenysin has been scarcely studied. According to previous studies, B. licheniformis is better adapted to anaerobic growth than B. subtilis, and could be a good alternative for the anaerobic production of lipopeptide biosurfactants. In this review, the potential and limitations of surfactin and lichenysin production under anaerobic conditions will be analyzed, and the possibility of implementing foam-free processes for lichenysin production, in order to expand the market and applications of biosurfactants in different fields, will be discussed.

在过去的几十年里，微生物生物表面活性剂引起了研究人员和公司的关注，因为它们被认为是在众多应用中替代化学表面活性剂的有希望的候选者。尽管在过去几年中，在应变工程和使用低成本基板以降低其生产成本方面取得了相当大的进展，但主要瓶颈之一是它们的工业规模生产。传统的好氧生物表面活性剂生产工艺会导致过度发泡，这是由于使用了增加溶解氧浓度以允许微生物生长和生物表面活性剂生产所必需的高搅拌和曝气速率。已经研究了不同的方法来克服这个问题，尽管成功有限。一种未被广泛探索的替代方法是通过产生生物表面活性剂的微生物的厌氧生长来开发无泡沫工艺。Surfactin，由枯草芽孢杆菌是研究最广泛的脂肽类生物表面活性剂，也是迄今为止已知的最强效的生物表面活性剂。地衣芽孢杆菌菌株产生地衣素，这是一种脂肽生物表面活性剂，其结构与表面活性素相似。然而，尽管地衣素具有非凡的表面活性和潜在应用，但很少有人对其进行研究。根据以往的研究，地衣芽孢杆菌比枯草芽孢杆菌更能适应厌氧生长，并且可能是厌氧生产脂肽生物表面活性剂的良好替代品。本文将分析厌氧条件下生产表面活性剂和地衣菌素的潜力和局限性，并讨论实施无泡沫生产地衣菌素工艺的可能性，以扩大生物表面活性剂在不同领域的市场和应用。 .