Question: How would you go about extracting fuel in the lab?

Colin Keogh answered on 9 Nov 2014:

Extracting fuel depends on what source we use. Extracting fuel from dry things like wood, sticks, strain etc can be done by just burning the materials (like wood in a fire), gasifying them (turning them into a gas to burn), liquifying them (turning them into a liquid) or processing them to make charcoal and similar things.

Getting fuel from algae is harder. You need to press them to extract the oil from the algae. Then process that oil using a method call transesterification which creates alcohols which can then be burnt in cars, engines etc. The resulting fuel is very similar to petrol. This process just is a rapidly accelerated version of how natural makes oil.