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JAKARTA. The early history of biogas finding appeared in Europe. Biogas which is a result of anaerobic digestion was invented by a scientist named Alessandro Volta who did a research of gas taken out from swamp in 1770. That gas taken out from the swamp was identified as methane gas.

In its development, in 1875 was ascertained that biogas is a product of anaerobic digestion process. Next, in 1884 another scientist named Pasteur did a research about biogas using animal dung. This Pasteur research became the basic for biogas research nowadays.

Biogas development was up and down, such as in the end of 19th century, it was noted that Germany and France utilized agricultural waste becoming some unit of biogas generators. As long as the second war, farmers in England and other European continents made a small digester to produce biogas. However, in its development, because the fuel price was cheaper and easy to get, in 1950s biogas usage started to be left.

In 1950s Europe left biogas and moved to fuel, this fact reversed as what happened in developing countries such as India and Chinese which needed cheaper energy and always available. Chinese used biogas technology in domestic scale and this biogas was utilized by almost one third of householders in Chinese border area. The biogas development in Chinese could be said in significant development. In 1992 for about five millions householders used biogas installation, so that biogas became the main fuel of some part of Chinese.

As it was stated by Prof Li Kangmin and Dr Mae-Wan Ho, director of the The Institute of Science in Society, biogas was the heart of eco-economy development in Chinese, but some heritages had to be solved to reach higher potential.

The similar development also happened in India, in 1981 started developing biogas installation in India. Its biogas technique was the same as biogas technique developed in Chinese which used brick well model and drum, and also used basic material of animal dung and agricultural waste. It was noted that for about three millions householders in India using biogas installation in 1999.

By the 21st century, when we realized energy needs of fossil energy alternative, some countries started to develop new renewable energy, one of them was biogas. Big countries such as United States of America also gave its concern for biogas development. Energy Department of USA gave big fund for about US$ 2, 5 millions to develop biogas in California. (AK)