Abstract:Sodium and Zirconium modified zeolite (Zr-Na/Zeolite) was made through ion exchange with Na+ and deposition of zirconium hydroxide. Removal of ammonium and/or phosphate from aqueous solution containing ammonium, phosphate, and ammonium& phosphate by Zr-Na /Zeolite under different pH value, initial mass concentration and temperature was investigated. Results showed that the Zr-Na /Zeolite had a significant enhancement on phosphate adsorption while kept good ammonium adsorption efficiency compared with Na /Zeolite. The initial pH of the solution had a difference influence to the adsorption efficiency of ammonium and phosphate. The ammonium adsorption performance was relatively high at pH 4-8 and the maximum adsorption capacity was 4.5 mg/g. The phosphate adsorption performance decreased gradually with the increasing of pH. When the pH value changed from 2 to 10, the adsorption capacity decreased from 4.71 mg/g to 2.20 mg/g. When the initial concentration changed from 10 mg/L to 200 mg/L, the amount of adsorbed ammonium and phosphate increased from 1.42 mg/g to 11.6 mg/g and 2.46 mg/g to 11.8 mg/g, while the removal rate decreased from 57.0% to 23.2% and 98.2% to 23.6%, respectively. When the temperature of solution increased from 25 °C to 45 °C, the adsorption capacity of ammonia nitrogen increased by 10%, and the adsorption capacity of phosphorus increased by 11%. The adsorption procedure was suitable to be described by pseudo-second-order equation. The effective desorption of ammonium and phosphate on modified zeolite could be achieved using a 0.1 mol/L NaOH and 1.0 mol/L NaCl mixed solution and the regenerated modified zeolite almost kept the adsorption efficiency on phosphate within 14 cycle times.