Hydrophobic resins used in this study were synthesized in bulk by com­bining 8 g of EGDMA and 2 g of HMA with 10 mL of toluene as the poro — gen. Resin synthesis was carried out in a round bottom flask fitted with an argon bubbler and heated to 60 oC with constant stirring. Polymerization was initiated by addition of 1 mol percent AIBN and continued until the mixture formed a brittle solid. The polymer was then dried at 55 oC for 12 h, scraped from the flask and ground by mortar and pestle. The crushed resin was then sized between #35 and #170 meshes to obtain beads of ap­proximately 100-500 pm diameter.

As an alternative to solvent extraction, FAME generated by sulfuric acid/methanol transesterification was collected by passing the reaction mixture over a hydrophobic resin bed. Here, the 100 mL of sulfuric acid/ methanol used to elute algae off the Amberlite resin was passed through a 10 mL polypropylene column containing 2 g of EDGMA-HMA resin. The resin was then eluted with 50 mL of hexane-ethyl acetate (3:1, v/v) solvent that was subsequently removed by rotary evaporation and the residue resuspended in 1 mL hexane-isopropanol (3:1, v/v) for HPLC analysis. For comparison, parallel samples of algae bound to Amberlite were eluted with 100 mL sulfuric acid/methanol and extracted with two 20 mL portions of hexane. After mixing and phase separation, the up­per organic phase was recovered, dried by rotary evaporation, and the residue resuspended in 1 mL hexane-isopropanol (3:1, v/v) for HPLC analysis.