ORIGINAL PAPER Magnetite nanoplates decorated on anodized aluminum oxide nanofibers as a novel adsorbent for efficient removal of As(III) O. Moradlou 1 • S. Dehghanpour Farashah 1 • F. Masumian 1 • A. Z. Banazadeh 2 Received: 28 February 2015 / Revised: 11 November 2015 / Accepted: 11 January 2016 / Published online: 4 February 2016 Ó Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2016 Abstract In this study, arsenic as an environmental top- ranked hazardous substance was efficiently removed by a novel adsorbent fabricated by magnetite Fe 3 O 4 nanoplates decorated on anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) nanofibers. AAO nanofibers were prepared by anodic polarization method, and then Fe 3 O 4 nanoplates were grown on AAO- based substrate by hydrothermal method to fabricate AAO/ Fe 3 O 4 nanosorbent. Morphology of the fabricated adsor- bents was characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and their crystallinity was studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD). Arsenic (III) removal potential of the proposed adsorbent from contaminated water sam- ples was investigated by the determination of As(III) amounts in the samples by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy before and after adsorption process at sub-lgL -1 levels. The results showed that without pre- and post-treatments such as pH adjustment, As(III) was removed effectively from contaminated water samples by using the proposed adsorbent. AAO/Fe 3 O 4 sorbent showed excellent ability to remove 0.1 mg L -1 As(III) from water samples up to 96 % uptake. Freundlich adsorption isotherm model was used to interpret the As(III) adsorption on proposed sorbent. The Freundlich isotherm parameters n and k F were obtained to be 2.2 and 10.2, respectively, representing the high affinity of proposed adsorbent for arsenic removal. Keywords Magnetite Fe 3 O 4 nanoplates Á Anodized aluminum oxide nanofibers Á Arsenic removal Á Water samples Abbreviations AAO Anodized aluminum oxide ANS Alumina-based nanosorbent ICP-OES Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy Introduction Arsenic is an important element that has impacts on public health, commercial interests, the environment, water and geopolitics. Arsenic (As) is a common environmental contaminant found naturally in groundwater. It is reported that As-contaminated groundwater has been identified as a serious threat in parts of world such as Bangladesh, Argentina, China, Taiwan, USA (Smedley and Kinniburgh 2002; Henke 2009), and it seems that more than 100 mil- lion people of the world may be at risk from arsenic-con- taminated water (Henke 2009). The presence of As in groundwater is largely the result of minerals dissolving from rocks and soils. As a new arsenic rule in drinking water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) low- ered the maximum concentration level of allowed As content in water systems from 50 to 10 ng mL -1 at 2002 (US EPA 2002). Arsenic and its compounds are among the naturally occurring contaminants worldwide, whose use is Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13762-016-0941-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & O. Moradlou moradlou@alzahra.ac.ir 1 Department of Chemistry, Alzahra University, Tehran, P.O. Box: 1993893973, Iran 2 Department of Chemical and Petrochemical Engineering, Standard Research Institute, Karaj, P.O. Box: 31745-139, Iran 123 Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. (2016) 13:1149–1158 DOI 10.1007/s13762-016-0941-3