According to the experimental results, for N. gaditana the use of ultrasound, microwave and autoclaving for cell disruption prior to lipid extraction by Bligh and Dyer leads to a slight increase in the amount of lipid recovered, as compared to the extraction of the untreated microalga, which presented 9.8% lipid content. On the other hand, the steam explosion pretreatment brought about a significant improvement in the lipid extraction yields, with values up to 17.9% and 18.2% at
both temperatures studied, 120 °C and 150 °C, respectively.