ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a taste of the broader picture, concentrating mainly on the 'developing' world and the USA. It focuses on three major anaerobic digestion (AD) systems: the Chinese system; the Indian Gobar system; and the Pakistani Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) system. The approach to the biogas technology, at both federal and state levels, is encouraging but it seems that the USA has not taken to AD in the same way as the developing countries, or even parts of Europe. There are now close to 2,000 operational AD sites in the USA, making that country one of the biggest in the Western world. The chapter also details about the digestion systems in other developing countries: in Nepal there are some 20,000 AD plants installed, in Bangladesh the figure is around 6,000, in Vietnam 18,000, and in Indonesia some 800 plants were constructed in 2012 alone.
