BioDieselAmerica.org
Title
Home | Biodiesel America
Description
Josh Tickell’s research has taken him from the grease dumpsters of Florida and the farms of the Australian Outback to the Laboratories of the Department of Energy and the oil refineries of the Gulf Coast. Tickell has consulted and testified for companies and organizations such as the National Biodiesel Board, Clif Bar, Quicksilver and the Arizona State House of Representatives. His first book, From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank - The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel, is a bestseller and has been instrumental in jumpstarting the biodiesel industry.
A native of South Louisiana, Tickell has been extensively involved in hurricane disaster relief efforts. His work with biodiesel in Louisiana was selected by President Bill Clinton as part of the Global Initiative on Climate Change.
The year was 1996. I was a college student on a semester abroad in Europe. The focus of my studies was agriculture and energy—the two cornerstones of our society. While working on a small organic farm in former East Germany, I saw something that changed my life. We were harvesting fields of yellow flowering plants and crushing their seeds to extract vegetable oil. The oil was taken to a large stainless steel machine owned cooperatively by the local farmers. Inside that machine, something incredible happened: the vegetable oil that we had pressed from the yellow rapeseed was transformed into a fuel that could run in any diesel engine. The farmers called this fuel biodiesel. To the farmers, the process was routine. To me, it represented a complete revolution in thinking. If we could simply “grow” our own fuel, then why was America so fixated on petroleum?
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