Hydrocarbons are able to be ‘milked’ (without cell death) from Botryococcus braunii using a solvent added to the growth medium (Moheimani et al. 2013a). Advances in this research further demonstrated that hydrocarbons could be repeatedly extracted (milked) from B. braunii using the solvent every 5 days for a total of 70 days with no addition of fertilisers (N and P) to the culture (Moheimani et al. 2013b). In this experiment, the cells were not dividing and therefore, nutrients were not required for the production of proteins and other cell elements. Instead, the majority of the light energy was used to convert CO2 to hydrocarbons to replace those previously milked.