if ammonia concentration is more means it will directly affect the pH of your reactor, ultimately your gas production will be affect, finally your reactor will failure very soon.

if ammonia concentration is more means it will directly affect the pH of your reactor, ultimately your gas production will be affect, finally your reactor will failure very soon. then methanogens organisms will affect due to the ph variation .

Dear Arun et al.,

It appears that there is some confusion. Free (dissolved) ammonia NH3 is indeed inhibitive/toxic for methanogens even at relatively low concentrations. However ammonium ions NH4+ are NOT and are in fact nutrients! As you probably know there is an equilibrium  between NH4+ and NH3 in water depending on the pH and temperature. Hence by controlling the pH, the operator can shift this equilibrium towards more NH4+ and less NH3.

In addition, there are complementing anaerobic biological ways to effectively remove NH4/NH3.

I/we have good experience in design and operation of high-rate anaerobic digestion (HRAD) on landfill leachate in China.

Dear Arun ,

 I agree with Mr Bruno, Both form of ammonium ions formation are depends upon temperature, pH and  reduction potential of media( leachates). This will affect the methanogens  as well as nitrogens   

Yes, it is free ammonia which inhibits the anaerobic digestion process and most affected microbial population is methanogens. However, if the concentration of ammonia slowly builds up it is seen that micrbes get acclimated to it and can adapt to higher concentratins of ammonia. Following paper can be of help in this regard:

Ammonia inhibition in anaerobic digester: a review.

Landfill leachates are reported to have high concentration of ammonia as you mentioned, it means the pH of the reactor or the landfil will increase because ammonia is a strong base which will directly affect the efficiency of the microbes. Yes Indeed, ammonia or ammonium ion is toxic for microbes and causes shortening lifespan of microbes (mainly yeast as i have experienced). So the solution is the use of zeolite to remove the ammonia or ammonium ion from the reactor or the lanfil. If anyone have other solution to remove the ammonia or ammonium ion from the reactor so please recommend. Thank you

Arun! did you found the solution? As I see the posting date of your problem now. Please Update us. Thank you