History
Scientific interest in the manufacturing of gas produced by the natural decomposition of organic matter was first reported in the 17th century by Robert Boyle and Stephen Hale, who noted that flammable gas was released by disturbing the sediment of streams and lakes. In 1808, Sir Humphry 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. In 1895, the technology was developed in Exeter, England, where a septic tank was used to generate gas for the sewer gas destructor lamp, a type of gas lighting. Also in England, in 1904, the first dual-purpose tank for both sedimentation and sludge treatment was installed in Hampton. In 1907, in Germany, a patent was issued for the Imhoff tank, an early form of digester.
Through scientific research, anaerobic digestion gained academic recognition in the 1930s. This research led to the discovery of anaerobic bacteria, the microorganisms that facilitate the process. Further research was carried out to investigate the conditions under which methanogenic bacteria were able to grow and reproduce. This work was developed during World War II, during which in both Germany and France, there was an increase in the application of anaerobic digestion for the treatment of manure.
Read more about this topic: Anaerobic Digestion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)