User:Sophiaszy/sandbox

Economic Importance
Various human activities, such as fertilizer production and chemical plant usage, release significant amounts of ammonia into the freshwaters and the seas. Ammonia buildup in aquatic environments due to heavy industrialization is potentially dangerous because high aquatic ammonia content could lead to eutrophication. Biological wastewater treatment systems, as well as other biological ammonia-removing methods, depend on the metabolism of certain groups of Betaproteobacteria that undergo nitrification and denitrification to remove excessive ammonia from wastewater. For example, Betaproteobacteria is predominant in the microbial community of a membrane bioreactor for wastewater treatment, with 13 genera in the class identified in the bioreactor. These processes decrease the ammonia content in the wastewater to tolerable limits before the treated wastewater is released into the environment.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) utilize different species of Betaproteobacteria to remove ammonia from wastewater by converting ammonia to nitrogen gas. Nitrobacter sp. is an example of the Betaproteobacteria that are used in a wastewater treatment plant at Thizy. WWTPs often rely on ammonia-oxidizing bacteria to collaboratively oxidize ammonia to nitrate via nitrification. For example, Nitrosomonas sp. is an autotrophic betaproteobacterium that is commonly used in the WWTPs in Tokyo to oxidize ammonia to nitrite. Nitrite-oxidizing Betaproteobacteria such as Nitrosospira sp. and Nitrobacter sp. can subsequently oxidize nitrite to nitrate. The final step after ammonia have been fully oxidized to nitrate is denitrification. Nitrate-reducing bacteria in WWTPs can reduce nitrate to nitrogen gas, which is able to diffuse out of wastewater. Rhodocyclales is a betaproteobacterial denitrifier found in multiple WWTPs in China.

Sophiaszy (talk) 08:17, 19 November 2017 (UTC)