AzCATI
Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation
Overview
The Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI), located at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus, partners with the rapidly growing algae industry to propel Arizona into the forefront of innovation in biofuels and bio-product research and development.
AzCATI serves as a statewide and international intellectual and resource hub for algae-based goods, finds innovative commercial uses for algae, operates as a learning environment for next-generation scientists; facilitates collaboration between higher education, industry, and national entities; and is a national "test bed" for algae technology.
AzCATI is Arizona's platform to spur a new industry cluster in research, development, and commercialization of products along the algal value chain. We have formed multidisciplinary teams from biological, chemical, and engineering disciplines across academic, governmental, and industry boundaries. They will enable scientific discoveries, development of cutting-edge technologies, and generation of innovative solutions to key biological, engineering, and economic problems critical for transformation and translation of algae into cost-affordable, sustainable sources of feedstock for biofuels and bioproducts and environmental improvement through carbon capture and wastewater bioremediation.
Visit the AzCATI website for additional information at www.azcati.com
Mission
- Connect - Serve as an intellectual and physical hub to foster local, state, national and international research and education on algae-based solutions for a sustainable environment
- Advance - Enable development of innovative and sustainable technologies for production of microalgae feedstocks for biofuels and bioproducts
- Collaborate - Facilitate collaborations among universities, national laboratories, and industry to accelerate technology development and commercialization
- Educate - Provide innovative learning and educational environments and opportunities for training next generation scientists and engineers for the biotechnology workforce
- Launch - Serve as a national test bed to accelerate the advancement of algae technology development and commercialization
Services
- Strain identification and evaluation
- Culture medium evaluation
- Culture systems design and evaluation
- Culture maintenance and operation protocol development
- Design recommendations for system integration and optimization
- Nutrient scaling, sustainability, and management
- Water conservation, management, and recycling
- Prototype unit operation assessment
- Process and techno-economic modeling
- Co-products identification and analysis
Staff and Partners
Staff
- Milton Sommerfeld
co-director - Qiang Hu
co-director - Thomas Dempster
lab and safety manager
technical lead-strain selection and development - John McGowen
project manager - Jessica Cheng
project manager - Pete Zemke
technical lead-photobioreactors - Yantao Li
technical lead-biology - Xuezhi Zhang
technical lead-downstream processing - Wei Chen
technical lead-extraction and conversion
Partners
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory
- Sandia National Laboratories
- Algasol
- NanoVoltaix, Inc.
- Raven Industries
- Salt River Project
- SRS Energy
- World Water Works
- Heliae Development
- Intel
- PHYCO Biosciences
- Algae Biosciences Corp.
- Litree
- QIBEBT
- Dionex
- Fluid Imaging Technologies
- University of Arizona
- Science Foundation Arizona
- ASU College of Technology and Innovation
- LARB
- Diversified Technologies, Inc.
