In the microalgae industry, the extraction of microalgae oil is an important process because it involves high energy consumption and high cost. At present, the main microalgae oil extraction methods are mechanical pressing [ 25 ], supercritical fluid extraction [ 27 ], enzyme extraction [ 43 ], and organic solvent extraction [ 7 ].
Can methanol extract microalgae oil?
To verify the impact of complex solvents, two and three of methanol, water, and chloroform were mixed to extract microalgae oil. It’s notable to find that after adding methanol or water into chloroform, the microalgae oil extraction yield was greatly raised to 34.6% and 43.3%.
How can UAE improve the extraction rate of microalgae lipids?
Araujo et al. ( Araujo et al., 2013) also confirmed that UAE can improve the extraction rate of microalgae lipids, by using ultrasound combined with five methods including Bligh-Dyer, Folch and Soxhlet to extract lipids from Chlorella vulgaris.
Can microalgae be extracted from wet biomass?
In the case of microalgae, the solvent is generally added to dry biomass, although the utilization of wet biomass can decrease the overall cost of the process because it is an energy-saving extraction procedure with the disadvantage that usually affects the separation process causing a low extraction efficiency ( Xu et al., 2021 ).