Screening and production of rhamnolipids by Pseudomonas aeruginosa 47T2 NCIB 40044 from waste frying oils

World production of oils and fats is about 2·5 million tonnes, 75% of which are derived from plants. Most of them are used in the food industry for the manufacture of different products, or directly as salad oil. Great quantities of waste are generated by the oil and fat industries: residual oils, tallow, marine oils, soap stock, frying oils. It is well known that the disposal of wastes is a growing problem and new alternatives for the use of fatty wastes should be studied. Used frying oils, due to their composition, have great potential for microbial growth and transformation. The use of economic substrates such as hydrophobic wastes meets one of the requirements for a competitive process for biosurfactant production. In the Mediterranean countries, the most used vegetable oils are sunflower and olive oil. Here we present a screening process is described for the selection of micro‐organism strains with the capacity to grow on these frying oils and accumulate surface‐active compounds in the culture media. From the 36 strains screened, nine Pseudomonas strains decreased the surface tension of the medium to 34–36 mN/M; the emulsions with kerosene remained stable for three months. Two Bacillus strains accumulated lipopeptide and decreased the surface tension to 32–34 mN/m. Strain Ps. aeruginosa 47T2 was selected for further studies. The effect of nitrogen and a C/N of 8·0 gave a final production of rhamnolipid of 2·7 g l−1 as rhamnose, and a production yield of 0·34 g g−1.