In situ extraction by organic solvent was studied in order to improve the recovery yield of hydrocarbon from the culture of Botryococcus braunii, a green colonial microalga. When the solvent mixture of octanol as an extractive solvent and n-octane as a biocompatible solvent was added to a two-phase column, the algal growth was seriously inhibited, even at a low concentration of polar octanol. Therefore, a two-stage cell-recycle extraction process was proposed to improve the contact area between the organic phase and the aqueous phase. The hydrocarbon recovery with in situ cell-recycle extraction showed a three-fold increase (57% of cell) in yield over that with two-phase extraction. In addition, over 60% of the hydrocarbon could be recovered without serious cell damage by downstream separation when this process was applied to the culture broth after batch fermentation.