Remember to put your own text here (same as alt text)News: From Steve Lyon, CH2M; Lyle center Lecturer "For the past nine years, I been a judge for the National Water Research Institute at the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair in Costa Mesa, CA. Last year I met a 10th grader named Sarah Adams who made her own biodiesel from vegetable oil and tested it in a miniature diesel engine. I mentioned what we were doing at CalPoly Pomona with the first stages of our algae project". She joined the group with great enthusiasum.Steve ran into Sarah at the 2008 Fair and was pleasantly surprised. "She researched the field of algae, lipids and algae culturing. She and her father designed and built a spiral algae bioreactor for growing up enough algae to produce biodiesel. Once she had enough algae to test, she met with my colleague Hossein Ahmadzadeh in the Chemistry department to learn about hexane extraction and lipid analysis. Much of the past year was spent learning the ups and downs of algae culturing. This is the kind of future scientist/engineer we should hire when she gets out of college in five years!" |
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