The use of microalgal lipids for liquid fuels production is an emerging alternative. Before extracting lipids from microalgae, some important stages are necessary such as: microalgae dewatering and lipids extraction. The cultivation of microalgae is made in a great amount of water, then it is necessary the use of water removal techniques before the lipids extraction. Furthermore, lipids extraction techniques must be tuned up in order to achieve a better separation depending on the type of technique and the solvent. The purpose of the present study is to compare two different microalgae harvesting techniques and two methods for the total lipids extraction of Pavlova–Lutheri microalgae. The studied harvesting techniques for microalgae recovery were: flocculation–coagulation (99.8% efficiency) and electrocoagulation (97.4% efficiency). Two extraction methods were also studied with different solvents: Soxhlet and ultrasound. It was observed that, the use of ultrasound irradiation for lipids extraction improves the extraction efficiency. In ultrasound extraction, the highest percentage (47.20%) was reached with a mixture of chloroform and methanol 1:2 as extraction solvent. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 35: 1842–1847, 2016