Performance enhancements in select industrial applications using surfactants, surfactant additives, and thermostable enzymes

Household detergents have undergone many formulation updates to improve the cleaning power of surfactants and to adapt formulations to specific applications. This paper focuses on more recent developments in the use of surfactants for household as well as industrial use. Specific examples include the use of enzymes derived from moderately thermophilic bacteria as laundry detergent additives, the use of surfactants and surfactant additives in the manufacture of warm mix asphalt, and the use of foaming agents in chemical enhanced oil recovery.

Effect of alkaline protease produced from fish waste as substrate by Bacillus clausii on destaining of blood stained fabric

Alkaline protease or peptidases are the largest groups of enzymes in the biological industry with a variety of application in manufacturing units used in the process of substrate stabilization, dehairing, diagnosis, extraction, food production, destaining, etc., where the pH of the environmental conditions remain above neutral pH. Because of these wider applications of alkaline proteases in industries, their demand is increasing to compete with their chemical counterpart. An alkaline tolerant bacterial strain Bacillus clausii wasisolated from fish waste and used for mass production of alkaline protease using fish waste homogenate as media. Preliminary study on optimization of conditions for the mass production carried out. The optimum temperature for production ranges between 25°C and 35°C and pH determined as 9. The mass production of extracellular alkaline protease carried out using mobilized and immobilized cells of B. clausii at optimized condition using production media, the mixture of production media and fish waste homogenate and in nutrient broth. The recorded results showed that the maximum enzyme production obtained with immobilized cells in nutrient broth media and followed by fish waste homogenate media of 8900 U/ml and 8600 U/ml. Purification protease enzyme yielded 0.35 g/ml from the production media . Bloodstained cloth treated with immobilized enzyme removed the stain completely compared to treatment with non-immobilized enzyme and commercially used detergent. So, the current study suggests the usage of microbial alkaline protease in household detergents to replace the usage of synthetic detergents and save the environment from chemical pollutants.

Deamidation and glycation of a Bacillus licheniformis α-amylase during industrial fermentation can improve detergent wash performance

The industrial thermostable Bacillus licheniformis α-amylase (BLA) has wide applications, including in household detergents, and efforts to improve its performance are continuously ongoing. BLA during the industrial production is deamidated and glycated resulting in multiple forms with different isoelectric points. Forty modified positions were identified by tandem mass spectrometric peptide mapping of BLA forms separated by isoelectric focusing. These modified 12 asparagine, 9 glutamine, 8 arginine and 11 lysine residues are mostly situated on the enzyme surface and several belong to regions involved in stability, activity and carbohydrate binding. Eight residues presumed to interact with starch at the active site and surface binding sites (SBSs) were subjected to mutational analysis. Five mutants mimicking deamidation (N→D, Q→E) at the substrate binding cleft showed moderate to no effect on thermostability and k cat and K M for maltoheptaose and amylose. Notably, the mutations improved laundry wash efficiency in detergents at pH 8.5 and 10.0. Replacing three reducing sugar reactive side chains (K→M, R→L) at a distant substrate binding region and two SBSs enhanced wash performance especially in liquid detergent at pH 8.5, slightly improved enzymatic activity and maintained thermostability. Wash performance was most improved (5-fold) for the N265D mutant near substrate binding subsite +3.

The Effect of Common Detergents on The Causative Virus of Newcastle Disease

Newcastle disease is one of the most severe poultry viral diseases due to its ability to cause massive economic losses and about 100% mortality in chickens. Many disinfectants have been used on farms to prevent the disease. However, the use of existing commercial disinfectants nowadays is considered expensive. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of commercial detergents as disinfectants in inactivating the virus. Two commercial detergents containing Alkylbenzene sulfonates, which can dissolve the viral envelope lipid, were tested. More so, three concentrations of 1%, 1.5%, and 2% were used, with contact times of 5, 10, and 15 minutes, respectively. The commercial disinfectant Virkon was employed as a control. The results showed that commercial detergents had the same results compared to control by being able to inactivate the virus with a concentration of 1%, 1.5%, and 2% in 5, 10, and 15 minutes, respectively. This shows that simple and inexpensive household detergents can be used as an alternative for disinfection.