The History of Anaerobic Digestion
Biogas was first used for heating bath water in Assyria during the10th century
BC and then in Persia during the 16th century. In the 17th century, Jan Baptita
Van Helmont found that decaying organic material produced flammable gases.
In 1776, Count Alessandro Volta resolved that there was a direct connection
between how much organic material was used and how much gas the material produced.
In 1808, Sir Humphrey Davy determined that methane was present in the gases
produced by cattle manure.
The first anaerobic digester was built by a leper colony in Bombay, India
in 1859. The anaerobic technology then moved to England in 1895, when
biogas was
recovered from a sewage system and used to fuel street lamps. In the 1930’s,
people began to recognize anaerobic digestion as a science, and research
was done that led to the discovery of anaerobic bacteria and that led to
more research
into the required conditions to grow methane bacteria. In 1978, Cornell
University built the first plug flow digester that was able to digest the
manure from
sixty cows! We’ve come a long way since the first anaerobic digester,
but we are still discovering new things about anaerobic digestion every
day!
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