Transport phenomena in foam fractionation

泡沫分离在矿物和食品加工中有许多直接的应用，但其最令人兴奋的潜力是作为回收和纯化高价值生物表面活性剂的低成本替代品。这些材料用于稳定生命系统中的界面，并可用作抗生素和抗病毒剂。生物表面活性剂在界面处聚集的亲和力表明泡沫分离是浓缩有价值产品的理想方法。显然，一种具有成本效益和可靠的方法，丰富的生物表面活性剂流将使其使用更有吸引力，并将产生更多的新的生物材料，如pepfactants的发展。

Foam fractionation has a number of immediate applications in mineral and food processing but its most exciting potential is as low cost alternative for recovering and purifying high value biosurfactants. These are materials used to stabilise interfaces in living systems, and can be used as antibiotics and antiviral agents. The affinity for biosurfactants to collect at an interface suggests that foam fractionation is an ideal process to concentrate valuable products. Clearly, a cost-effective and reliable method of enriching streams of biosurfactants will make their use even more attractive and will engender the development of more novel biomaterials, such as pepfactants.