Simultaneous cell disruption and lipid extraction in a microalgal biomass using a nonpolar tertiary amine

•Simultaneous cell disruption and lipid extraction of microalgae is accomplished.•The cell surfaces are significantly disrupted by the triethylamine/methanol system.•92.5% of the total lipids are extracted from the wet microalgal biomass.

A simultaneous cell disruption and lipid extraction method is developed for microalgal biodiesel production using a triethylamine/methanol solvent system. Individually, the pure solvents, i.e. triethylamine and methanol, do not exhibit significant enhancement in lipid extraction, but a 3:7 (v/v) triethylamine/methanol mixture exhibits the highest lipid extraction, corresponding to 150% of the conventional chloroform/methanol (2:1, v/v) solvent extraction. This extraction is equivalent to 92.5% of the total lipids, even when extracted from a wet microalgal biomass with a water content of 80%. The cell surfaces of the microalgae are significantly disrupted without using additional cell disruption reagents and without requiring energy-intensive equipment. The lipid mass transfer coefficient is 1.6 times greater than that of the chloroform/methanol solvent system. It is clearly demonstrated that triethylamine and methanol cooperate well for the cell disruption and lipid extraction.