After addition of electrolyte in ECH process, biomass harvested has shown slightly higher lipid yields as compared to biomass from normal ECH process. When NaCl is added in ECH process as electrolyte for recovery of C. sorokiniana, lipid yields showed a slight increase (13.72 ± 0.43% DCW with 6 g NaCl) as compared to ECH process without electrolyte (12.14 ± 0.15% DCW) and control (12.37 ± 0.17% DCW) as shown in Fig. 4b. This may be caused due to weakening of cell wall due to osmotic shock produced by NaCl which aids in subsequent cell disruption by microwave technique and effective lipid extraction [31,32]. Addition of NaCl and subsequent ongoing electrochemical process leads to formation of active chlorine species such as hypochlorous (HOCl) acid and hypochlorite ion (OCl ). The generation of active chlorine in the algal broth and its ingestion could be credited to the fact that the active chlorine would react with the algae cells immediately after generation [20]. The effect of generated active chlorine as an oxidizing agent on harvesting of microalgae was studied by Gao et al. [20] where they found presence of chloride ion improves harvesting efficiency. Conferring to Drees et al. [33], the severe weakening of the algae cells after treatment by ECH process in the presence of NaCl might be explained by the synergetic effect of the electrochemically generated oxidants and the external electric field. Consistent with our hypothesis that generation of active chlorine could enhance lipid extractability as we observed the addition of NaCl could indeed increase lipid recovery