ORIGINAL PAPER Preparation and characterization of ZSM5-supported nano-zero- valent iron and its potential application in nitrate remediation from aqueous solution M. Shekarriz 1 • Z. Ramezani 2 • F. Elhami 3 Received: 28 May 2016 / Revised: 29 September 2016 / Accepted: 20 December 2016 / Published online: 2 January 2017 Ó Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2017 Abstract Zeolite Socony Mobil-5 (ZSM5)-supported nano-zero-valent iron (NZVI@ZSM5) was synthesized using homogenous precipitation method. The prepared particles were characterized by transmission electron microscope (TEM), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), atomic force microscope, X-ray diffraction spectroscopy and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller as well as Fourier transform spectroscopy. The TEM image confirms the formation of NZVI particles with average size of 15 nm within ZSM5 pores. Moreover, the ability of the NZVI@ZSM5 in nitrate removal from industrial wastew- aters was tested. The effects of different parameters such as solution pH, NZVI@ZSM5-nitrate solution contact time, amounts of NZVI@ZSM5, initial nitrate concentration and nitrate solution volume on removal efficiency were inves- tigated. More than 97% nitrate ion was removed at pH = 2.5, 30 min contact time, and 0.55 g NZVI@ZSM5 for 100 mL of 50 lg mL -1 nitrate. It was also shown that among the four fitted adsorption isotherms, Langmuir iso- therm gives the best description of the adsorption process. Kinetic studies showed that nitrate removal using NZVI@ZSM5 obeys pseudo-second-order kinetics (R 2 = 0.9998). The present method was successfully applied to the removal of nitrate contents of different wastewater gathered from the different industries located in the Khuzestan province, Iran. The reduction in their nitrate contents was in the range of 94–99%. Keywords Nitrate removal Á ZSM5 Á NZVI@ZSM5 Á Industrial wastewater Á Zero-valent iron Introduction Nitrate removal from drinking and waste water is of vital importance since the toxicity and especially carcinogenic- ity of the high level of nitrate on both human and ani- mals is reported. Therefore, a vast verieties of nitrate remediation procedures have been introduced. Some researchers reported chemical reduction methods. In these methods, nitrate is converted to nitrite, ammonium ion or nitrogen gas (James 2000; Go ´mez et al. 2002; Wang et al. 2009; Li et al. 2010; Devadas et al. 2011; Kassaee et al. 2011; Pan et al. 2012). Denitrification using different living organisms is another method for nitrate remediation from aqueous media (Rajakumar et al. 2008; Ayyasamy et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2009; Ma et al. 2010; Zhao et al. 2011). Water desalination by reverse osmosis and membrane fil- trations remove nitrate as well (Baek and Yang 2004; Tepus ˇ et al. 2009; Kumar and Goel 2010). There are a vast variety of methods which take advantage of nitrate adsorption on the surface of a suitable sorbent (O ¨ ztu ¨rk and Bektas 2004; Yuh-Shan 2005; Cengeloglu et al. 2006; Mena-Duran et al. 2007; Wang et al. 2007a, b; Chatterjee et al. 2009; Chatterjee and Woo 2009; Demiral and Editorial responsibility: Binbin Huang. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13762-016-1213-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Z. Ramezani zramezani@ajums.ac.ir 1 Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), West Blvd., Near Azadi Sports Complex, Tehran, Iran 2 Nano-Technology Research Center, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran 3 Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Shiraz Payame-Noor University, Shiraz, Iran 123 Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. (2017) 14:1081–1090 DOI 10.1007/s13762-016-1213-y