Experimental studies exploring new technologies to extract energy from algal biomass are often based on lyophilized algae or use solvents that are difficult to use at the industrial scale (e. g., chloroform). For instance, oil extraction performance and oil esterification yields are of primary importance to realize the LCA of algal biodiesel. Yet up to now LCA studies have demonstrated that dry extraction was too expensive in terms of energy, but at the same time there is a lack of reliable data to assess the wet extraction path.

Anaerobic digestion is mostly used to produce bioenergy from the obtained residues after lipid extraction. Energy consumption should be taken into account, and the potential meth­ane production must be more realistically assessed with existing data in order to avoid overestimation of the global energy balance. Operational parameters such as the organic load­ing rate or the hydraulic retention time should be specified, since they directly influence the energy consumption of the anaerobic process.