Recently, the development of alternative energy is becoming increasingly urgent as the world
reserves of fossil fuels running out and globally averaged atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations are increasing. Microalgae synthesize and store large volumes of valuable lipid
compounds and microalgal lipids have potential commercial application as a novel source of
renewable biofuels in recent years. Total lipid extraction performed by commonly used
extraction techniques such as Folch et al. (1957), Bligh and Dyer (1959) and Selstam and
Oquist (1985), depend on a mixture of chloroform and methanol are complicated and timeconsuming
for testing a large numbers of biological samples. In the present study, a simple
and rapid method is presented for extraction of total lipids from unicellular green microalga
Dunaliella salina. In this method, 8 mL of a 2:1 chloroform-methanol (v/v) mixture was
added to 200 mg fresh microalgal material at room temperature. The suspension was agitated
by manual shaking for 30s using a vortex mixer and after 5 min, 2 mL of a 0.73% NaCl water
solution was added to produce a 2:1:0.8 system of chloroform: methanol: water (v/v/v). After
phase separation, the bottom layer of the extracts was oven dried and the weight of this
residue was recorded for a gravimetric estimate of total lipid content.