tThe objectives of this study were to evaluate bioethanol wastewater streams (thin stil-lage, process condensate and scrubber/dryer samples) as potential ‘green’ media to culturemicroalgae Haematococcus pluvialis, and to assess the effectiveness of ultrasound in microal-gal cell disruption and astaxanthin extraction. H. pluvialis was cultured in wastewaterdilutions (20–80 times) and formulations. Astaxanthin was extracted using ultrasound withcell-disrupting chemicals (acetic acid, citric acid, hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide)and astaxanthin extracting solvents (acetone, ethanol and methanol) at different extractiondurations (5–35 min). The results demonstrated that 60 times as the optimum dilution factorof thin stillage for microalgal growth, and a formulation known as GroAst media (60% of 60times diluted thin stillage, and 40% of process condensate) was proposed as the best mediafor astaxanthin production: 0.634 ± 0.009 mg/ml cyst density, a 10.5% improvement overstandard media. Astaxanthin extraction using ultrasound intensified the process in termsof short extraction time (25 min), less chemical consumption (2 M NaOH), usage of GRASsolvent (methanol), high efficiency in cell disruption, high extraction yield (80.6 ± 0.9%), andsuitability to extract thermolabile astaxanthin.