Abstract
Ankistrodesmus falcatus is a single-cell green alga with extremely tough cell walls; that could be difficult to disrupt in order to extract lipids. In this work various methods, including very fine grind, autoclaving, microwaves, sonication and osmotic shock at 10 % NaCl solution, using solvents systems, hexane, hexane:diethyl ether (1:1 v/v), hexane:isopropanol (1:1 v/v) and chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) were tested to identify the most effective cell disruption method. The highest lipid and fatty acids productivity were obtained by osmotic shock method using chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) 11.93 % of dry weight and 75.26 % of lipid productivity, respectively. Thus, among the tested methods and solvent systems, the osmotic shock with chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v) was the most simple, easy, and effective method for lipid extraction from A. falcatus. The analysis of crude lipids by GC-MS showed that the dominant types of fatty acids were palmitic acid (hexadecanoic acid) (48.74, 57.82, 52.22, 20.91 and 47.97 %), stearic acid (octadecanoic acid) (5.75, 5.68, 4.93, 0.88 and 1.74 %) and myristic acid (tetradecanoic acid) (2.87, 2.37, 1.29, 0 and 3.16 %) with very fine grind, osmotic shock, autoclaving, sonication and microwaves using chloroform:methanol (1:1 v/v), respectively.