Biofuel production in a post apocalyptic world.

I have recently started studying the consept of using algae as a bio fuel. This page will contain different steps in its production.
It is more of a collection of notes than anything. If you wish to learn about algae I would recommend this site
http://www.oilgae.com/
as one of the most comperhensive and probing site on the web.

Step 1: The Houseplant
The first and most important step in the project is the aquiring of a algae culture as well as a experimental bioreactor.
A small bio reactor is small in size and easy to run. It will not be larger than your averege house plant and it will have the same properties as one in regards to air purification. Its a algae houseplant.
When SHTF you can grab the culture and bring it in your BOB.
When things settledown and you have the ability to build larger containers for your algae you can start growing them at a very fast rate.

What you need is a water tight tube/bottle, rainwater, a pump of reasonable size (aquarium pump) and a power source to power the pump. you also need to add fertelizers to it like any plant to make it grow.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition)

The natural choice as a power source would be solarcells since you only need to run the pump when there is enough light to power it.
If you add UV-lights and a batterypack to the construction it will work without sunlight completly. This would theoretically double the production due to the continous light exposure.

When the slurry grows thick enough you can choose to either making another "houseplant"(one for the office) or taking 50% to make vegetable oil and in the end bio diesel (prosess will be explained in later steps.)

Step 2: buggin out
when SHTF you grab your algae culture and trow it in your bag. you can generally not keep the system running while mobile since you cant make it airtight. The algea will generally not die because you stop the system but the air inside the container will probably need chaning as soon as time is given.

Step 3: Make it bigger
Make it bigger.


Step 4: extraction
Once the algae in a container have reached "critical mass" it is time to harvest it or crate a new cell like in the houseplant version.
If you choose to harvest you simply drain the amount of algae you want to process from the container and replace the water with with fresh rainwater (note that there are breeds that can grow salt water. Those are choices that needs to be made in advance. freshwater is easier to maintain at a houseplant level but seawater might be better to use when there is a shortage of freshwater)

First you will need to drain the biomass of water. A good way is to dry them is in a "solar bed" something that can be used to distill water to begin with. It is basically a flat greenhouse dedicated to create vapor. The vapor is then collected to be used again in the algae wats.
You will now have something that looks like animal fodder (you can also use it as animal fodder).
This will need to be prosessed trough a press.
There are many commercial presses available on the market in different sizes. some have motors and some use manual strength.
A techichian would be able to design one himself. What you need is pressure and a channel in wich the oil can flow.
You will probably need to run it trough a filter of some kind. (one dude ran the oil trough a T-shirt and that was enough to get the bits out)
There are also chemical ways to increase oil yield but that will be added as I familiarize myself with the chemistry involved. It might not be obtainable post Z-Poc.

Step 5: Chemistry
At this point you will have a bottle or barrel of pure vegetable oil and if you have a modified motor you can run it as it is.
If you have a diesel engine you will need to make bio-diesel.

Bio-diesel require 2 chemicals.
Methanol and lye.