Biological lipids derived from oleaginous microorganisms are promising precursors for renewable biofuel productions. Direct lipid extraction from wet cell-biomass is favored because it eliminates the need for costly dehydration. However, the development of a practical and scalable process for extracting lipids from wet cell-biomass is far from ready to be commercialized, instead, requiring intensive research and development to understand the lipid accessibility, mechanisms in mass transfer and establish robust lipid extraction approaches that are practical for industrial applications. This paper aims to present a critical review on lipid recovery in the context of biofuel productions with special attention to cell disruption and lipid mass transfer to support extraction from wet biomass. (C) 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.