Patent ID: 7678931

Claim:
A method for extracting a lipid from a microbial biomass, comprising: (a) preparing the microbial biomass by a process, comprising: (i) freezing the microbial biomass at or below its brittleness temperature to produce a frozen microbial biomass; (ii) comminuting the frozen microbial biomass at a temperature no higher than the brittleness temperature to produce a comminuted biomass; (iii) thawing the comminuted biomass to at least a temperature at which the comminuted biomass is deformable; (iv) adding an effective amount of a dry agent to the thawed comminuted biomass to achieve an extrudable consistency; (v) extruding the comminuted biomass from step (iv) to produce an extruded biomass; and (b) percolation extracting the lipid from the extruded biomass.