Efficient algal harvesting, cell pretreatment and lipid extraction are the major steps challenging the algal biofuel industrialization. To develop sustainable solutions for economically viable algal biofuels, our research aims at devising innovative reactive electrochemical membrane (REM) filtration systems for simultaneous algal harvesting and pretreatment for lipid extraction. The results in this work particularly demonstrated the use of the Ti4O7-based REM in algal pretreatment and the positive impacts on lipid extraction. After REM treatment, algal cells exhibited significant disruption in morphology and photosynthetic activity due to the anodic oxidation. Cell lysis was evidenced by the changes of fluorescent patterns of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the treated algal suspension. The lipid extraction efficiency increased from 15.2 +/- 0.6 g-lipid g-algae(-1) for untreated algae to 23.4 +/- 0.7 g-lipid g-algae(-1) for treated algae (p < 0.05), which highlights the potential to couple algal harvesting with cell pretreatment in an integrated REM filtration process. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.