A fast and green process for the isolation of high value lipids from different marine microorganisms is presented involving the use of limonene, a green biodegradable solvent, as an alternative to traditional hexane extraction. The optimized process is based on pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) at 200 degrees C for 15 min using limonene:ethanol (1:1, v/v) as extracting solvent. Under these conditions, lipids were extracted from different microalgae such as Spirulina, Phormidium, Anabaena and Stigeoclonium and their composition in terms of fatty acids were studied by using a Fast-GC-MS method and compared with the original content in the raw material. The extraction method provided the best results in terms of extraction yield for Spirulina, meanwhile the highest amount of omega-3 fatty acids were obtained from Stigeoclonium. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.