Since groundwater supplies drinking water for billion of people worldwide, treatment of groundwater is of highest advantage. Among the usually encountered metals of worries, copper and zinc are serious and have been included in the Priority of Pollutants Lists by United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Hence, removal of Cu and Zn ions from water and wastewater by a suitable treatment becomes essential. Nanocomposites have received considerable attention in water treatment in recent years. Magnetic nanomaterials can aggregate and disperse by the external magnetic field which may be the best option to solve the suspension, recovery and reuse problems. In this work, the HAP nanoparticles were synthesized by sol-gel method and was used for the elimination of Cu2+ and Zn2+ from simulated groundwaters. The features of this nanocomposite adsorbent were characterized by XRD, FT-IR spectroscopy, SEM, EDX and VSM techniques. The results of SEM showed almost spherical shape of particles with average size of 23.45 nm. Experiments were conducted to explore the effect of pH on the absorption of copper and zinc ions. Then, the sorption ranging from 2 to 10 with the initial metal concentration of 40 ppm for 30 min. The results showed that the metal ion adsorptivity increased with increasing pH up to 5 and then decreased as pH was increased. The maximum removal percentage was achieved at pH=5 for Cu2+ and Zn2+ 98.4% and 92%, respectively.
