Can Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus be a world
leader in developing an alternate fuel source for
transportation? Directors of its Arizona Center for Algae
Technology and Innovation (AzCati) lab believe that it can.
Right now, it's simply being called Arizona Crude. Under a warm
and sunny sky - the right conditions for algae to reproduce and
thrive - more than 100 people, including Gov. Jan Brewer, Mesa
Mayor Scott Smith and Dan Simon, president of Gilbert-based
Heliae Technologies, attended Tuesday's dedication of
Polytechnic's expanded AzCati center under the university's
Light and Energy Department. The expansion includes about 80,000
gallons of algae inoculating and being screened in "harvesting
pools" on a 2-acre site in front of the lab building. Algae,
which is an original source for carbon used in petroleum
products, is being tested to see if it has a fast enough rate of
producing oil from fatty acids to make its way toward bio-mass
production for a green source of energy, and possibly se