ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some references to the use of anaerobic digestion (AD) to heat water in Assyria in the tenth century BC, and in Persia in the sixth century AD. It also provides an evidence that it was used in China around 4,000 years ago to heat brine during salt production. The chapter mentions notable scientists: Jan Baptista van Helmont, Robert Boyle, Count Alessandro Volta, Sir Humphry Davy, John Dalton, George Washington, Antoine Bechamp, Ulysse Gayon and Louis Pasteur, who contributed to the biogas production sector. It also details about biogas development in developing countries: India, China, Nepal, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The biogas plants now available vary from the tiny, household-scale widely used in the Indian sub-continent to the industrial-scale in Sweden, the USA and Germany. The China is said to have the largest biogas programme in the world, 25 million households are using biogas principally for cooking purposes, which is around 10" of all rural households.
