Nitrification



This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)
 

Nitrification is the biological Sergei Winogradsky.

The oxidation of ammonia into nitrite, and the subsequent oxidation to nitrate is performed by two different bacteria (carbon source for growth.

Nitrification also plays an important role in the removal of methanol) for the denitrification.

In most environments both organisms are found together, yielding nitrate as the final product. It is possible however to design systems in which selectively nitrite is formed (the Sharon process).

Together with ammonification, nitrification forms a mineralization process which refers to the complete decomposition of organic material, with the release of available nitrogen compounds. This replenishes the nitrogen cycle.

Chemistry

Nitrification is a process of nitrogen compound oxidation (effectively, loss of electrons from the nitrogen atom to the oxygen atoms) :

  1. NH3 + O2 → NO2− + 3H+ + 2e−
  2. NO2− + H2O → NO3− + 2H+ + 2e−


References

    The references in this article would be clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking.
    • Nitrification at the heart of filtration at fishdoc.co.uk
    • Nitrification at University of Aberdeen · King's College
    • Nitrification Basics for Aerated Lagoon Operators at lagoonsonline.com
     
    This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nitrification". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.