1.2　International Biogas History

1630, biogas created from plants deposited in a swamp was discovered by Van Helment, a doctor in Brussels, Belgium. This is one of 15 gases recorded by him that came from plants decomposition. This is the first historical record of biogas.

1667, Shirley also recorded combustible gas in digestion, but he didn't know its composition.

1776, Alessandro Volta, a physicist in Italy, discovered a combustible gas in swamp, and tried to analyze its composition. He also noticed that when one agitated the deposits at the bottom of a pond, many combustible bubbles rose to the pond surface.

1790, Priestley investigated this gas, and wrote a paper describing how combustible gas originates from the decomposition process of plants. This paper confirmed Volta's opinion.

1790, Dalton analyzed the composition of combustible biogas.

1806, William Henry obtained approximately 1L of gas mixture from compost in water. This gas mixture contained about 60％ carbon dioxide, and the rest were methane, with trace amounts of nitrogen gas. Later, he pointed out the combustible gas discovered by Volta was methane.

1808, Humphriey Davy, a chemist in England, began to investigate biogas fermentation from cattle manure with straw. He collected 0.3L of methane and 0.6L of carbon dioxide.

1866, Bechamp, a student of L. Pasteur, a scientist in France, suggested the methane formation is a microbial process, and then he called the process as Microzyma create.

1868, Bechamp also verified that methane come from carbon compound through microorganisms. Furthermore he obtained methane by using ethanol as only carbon source, carbonate as buffer matter, and sediments as inoculums.

1868, Reiset, a member of Royal Academy of Sciences, found that methane existed in a heap of cattle manure.

1875, Popoff, a scholar of Russia, discovered that methane fermentation is a complex microbial process. He and his research fellows first added materials containing cellulose to river mud for fermentation, resulting in production of hydrogen and methane.

1875, Wouter Sluys, a farmer in Holland, first used methane for lighting. The methane gas came from natural gas well, but not digester. At that time, there were about 60 farmer plants using this gas for a short time.

1882, Tappeiner carried out an experiment using plant matter as substrate and microbes from ruminant's intestine as inoculums. In this experiment, he set up three parallel groups. The first group contained antiseptic agent for inhibiting the growth of bacteria while had no effect on soluble enzyme, the second group killed bacteria and enzyme by boiling, the third group didn't receive any treatment. The result showed that only the third group could produce methane.

1883, Ulysse Gayon, a student of L.Pasteur, reported that biogas could be obtained from animal manure. In 1894, Paster published this result to French Academy of Sciences. He thought that biogas from manure digestion could be used for lighting and heating.

In the end of 19th century, the first digester for waste water treatment in France was set up by Louis Mouras. McCarty suggested that the event could be the beginning of anaerobic waste water treatment.

1889, W. D. Scott-Moncrief built a set of equipment under the same principle and used anaerobic filter to remove a great amount of suspended solid in water.

1894, A. N. Talbot designed a tank the same as Mouras Automatic Scavenger.

1895, Donald Cameron, an English man, designed a septic tank. After a year, he built a septic tank in Exeter for treating domestic sewage, and the gas called as sludge gas was used for street lighting.

1896, the British built an anaerobic digester for sewage treatment in Exeter. The sludge gas was used for street lighting.

1897, Matiunga Leper Asylum of Bombay, India, built a biogas plant by using human excrement as feedstock for biogas production. The biogas was used for lighting, and then for power in 1907.

1899, Harry W. Clark, an American, brought forward that sludge in sewage should be removed rapidly. Based on this idea, in 1904, W. O. Travis, an English man, developed septic tank and first built a double layer sediment tank in Hampton, called Travis Tank.

1900, the Indian built biogas digester using human excrement as feedstock from a hospital for lepers in Matunga.

1901, Söhngen brought forward the concept about morphological characteristics of methane bacteria.

1914, K. Imhoff, a German scholar, developed Travis Tank into Imhoff Tank.

1916,Omelianskii isolated firstly a strain of methane bacteria,Methanobacterium omelianskii,not a pure strain identified.

1920, the Chinese Guo Rui Nature Gas Storage was published.

1925, Lack indicated that there were about 18 kinds of protistan, such as mastigot, infusorian and Amoeba in the biogas fermentation process, which had no effect on fermentation.

Between 1930 and 1934, Van Niel brought forward a new theory of methane generation from carbon dioxide reduction. The chemical formulas are as follows:

4H2A=4A+8H　　(1-1)

CO2+8H=CH4+2H2O　　(1-2)

The total reaction is: 4H2A+CO2=4A+CH4+2H2O　　(1-3)

1936, using sewage sludge cultivated by chemical medium, H. A. Barker obtained a microorganism that is suitable for production of alcohol, propanol and butanol. At the same time, Heukelekian and Heinmann reported a technique for calculating the number of methane bacteria.

1948, Buswell and Sollo brought forward another theory of methane generation from methyl reduction. The chemical formulas are:

14CH3COOH=14CH4+CO2　　(1-4)

CD3COOH+H2O=CD3H+CO2+H2O　　(1-5)

4CH3OH+D2O=3CH3D+CO2　　(1-6)

1950, R. E. Hungate established an anaerobic technique which greatly contributed to initiating the study of methanogens.

1956, Baker testified the Buswell's methyl reduction theory, which came out that methyl group of acetic acid was directly reduced to methane, while carboxyl group of acetic acid was converted to carbon dioxide. In the same year, Barker Hypothesis was proposed, based on the combination of Van Niel's carbon dioxide reduction theory and Buswell's methyl reduction theory.

Also in 1956, Methanobacteriaceae was first summed up in 1 family, including 4 genera and 9 species by Barker.

From 50's to 60's: in the 20th century, Cooke detected many molds during the fermentation process, among which 36 kinds of molds were isolated. He believed that the molds and yeasts are involved the digestion process.

1965, the Hungate Technique was developed by Bryant.

1967,Bryant purified and identified Methanobacterium omelianskii,which is a symbiont of Methanobacterium MOH and“S”organic strain,which was known as interspecies H2-transfer.

1967, O. W. Lawrence and P. L. McCarty proposed a three-step process:hydrolysis, hydrogen & acid production, and methane production.

1969, Young and McCarty developed an anaerobic filter (AF), which was suitable for treatment of organic waste water.

1970, the coenzyme M (CoM) was discovered in Methanobacterium MOH strain by McBride & R. S. Wolfe.

1971, S. Ghosh, an American anaerobic digestive expert, developed Twophase Anaerobic Digester Process.

1972, the Factor 420 (F420) was discovered in Methanobacterium MOH strain by P. Cheeseman etc.

1974, Taylor and R. S. Wolfe confirmed the CoM structure.

1974, in the Bergy's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology (8th edition), methanogen was summed up in 1 family, including 3 genera and 9 species.

1974, Prof. G. Lettinga from Department of Water Pollution Control, Agricultural University of Wageningen, developed an up-flow anaerobic sludge bed (UASB), which has been applied since 1977.

1977, Archaebacteria, a brilliant concept (Fig.1.1) was raised by Carl. R. Woese, who was a head of research team in Illinois University. These unusual bacteria are genealogically neither prokaryotes nor eukaryotes. This discovery means there are not two lines of descent but three: the true bacteria and the eukaryotes.

1978, R. P. Gunsalus and R. S. Wolfe separated a coenzyme which called factor 430(F430)from Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicumDH strain.

1978, Tornabene et al. first studied lipids of methanogens.

1979, in the Bergy's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, methanogen was summed up in 3 orders, 4 families, 7 genera and 13 species.

1980, Smith pointed out that most methanogen could use hydrogen and carbon dioxide as base material to produce methane under pure cultivation, some of which could use methanoic acid.

1983, Thomm, Wood and Meile obtained plasmid from methanogen.

1983, Ferguson and Robert Mah proposed the metabolism mechanism of methane generation from formate, which testified hydrogen production during the conversion from formate to methane.

1987, Bacterial Evolution, written by Carl R. Woese, was published in Microbiological Reviews (1987, 51: 221-271). This paper was a symbol of establishing modern classification of bacteria.

1988, International Society of Methanogenic Classification was founded.

1992, Carl R. Woese changed Archaebacteria to Archaeon., as Archaeon is not bacteria.

1996,Complete Genome Sequence of the Methanogenic Archaeon,Methanococcus jannaschii was published by Bult C.J.et al.in Science (1996,273:1058-1073).

2001, in the Bergy's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology (2nd edition), methanogen was summed up in 5 orders, 10 families, 26 genera and 78 species.

2005, T. Allers and M. Mevareech indicated that genetic system is focused on Archaea genetic evolution.

2008, A. Hirata, B. J. Klein, and K. S. Murakami stated that the key components between prokaryotic bacteria and archaea consistent with each other in the process of information processing system, by the measurement of X-ray diffraction of the structure of RNA polymerase in archaea.

2010, Cooper and Meyer proposed the mutual relationship between archaea host and bacterial symbionts, derived from the evolution of eukaryotic cells.

2011, Takashi Narihiro and Yuji Sekiguchi from Japan Tsukuba Institute for Biomedical Research summed up the representative species of methanogens in 5 classes, 7 orders, 14 families, 33 genera, 101 species.