Leachate flush strategies for managing volatile fatty acids accumulation in leach-bed reactors

•The co-digestion of easily- and slowly-degradable substrates is assessed in LBRs.•A strategy to manage leachate flush and optimize methane production is proposed.•A high leachate flush-rate at the start-up enhances substrate degradation rates.•After methanogenesis started, leachate flush-rate can be reduced.•Mature LBR can be used to degrade external VFAs after the methane production peak.

In anaerobic leach-bed reactors (LBRs) co-digesting an easily- and a slowly-degradable substrate, the importance of the leachate flush both on extracting volatile fatty acids (VFAs) at the beginning of newly-started batches and on their consumption in mature reactors was tested. Regarding VFA extraction three leachate flush-rate conditions were studied: 0.5, 1 and 2 L kg−1 TS d−1. Results showed that increasing the leachate flush-rate during the acidification phase is essential to increase degradation kinetics. After this initial phase, leachate injection is less important and the flush-rate could be reduced. The injection in mature reactors of leachate with an acetic acid concentration of 5 or 10 g L−1 showed that for an optimized VFA consumption in LBRs, VFAs should be provided straight after the methane production peak in order to profit from a higher methanogenic activity, and every 6-7 h to maintain a high biogas production rate.