Ammonia nitrogen is one of the common pollutants, which exists in water in the form of NH3 or NH4+, and its main sources are wastewater produced by textile dyeing and finishing, organic compounds manufacturing, inorganic compounds manufacturing, petrochemicals, tannery, iron and steel industries, and livestock and poultry farming, urban wastewater treatment plants, and other domestic farm wastewater (Mazloomi and Jalali 2016; Meng et al. 2020). Ammonia nitrogen is a nutrient in the water body, is the main form of nitrogen in the water-phase environment, is an important pollutant in the eutrophication of water bodies, is an important indicator of eutrophication of water bodies (Ren et al. 2022).
Adsorption is one of the most popular methods for ammonia nitrogen removal due to its simple operation, low energy consumption, high removal rate and renewability (Liu et al. 2024). While zeolite molecular sieve is a porous material, its structure consists of specific zeolite minerals, showing an empty skeleton structure (Neilsen et al. 2022). This porous structure makes the zeolite molecular sieve has a large specific surface area, can adsorb substances smaller than its pore size, and exclude the larger size of the material, play the role of material "sieving". In addition, the polarity of the internal pore channel gives zeolite molecular sieve strong ammonia and nitrogen adsorption performance (Liu et al. 2024). At present, zeolite molecular sieve has been used as an irreplaceable consumable in downstream application industry, with the development of downstream application industry, the demand also continues to rise (Smith et al. 2018). However, due to the further increase in environmental protection, enterprises have to increase environmental protection investment while ensuring the production quality, thus increasing the production cost. Therefore, in order to reduce the production cost, finding cheap raw materials to synthesize zeolite molecular sieves and applying them to adsorb ammonia nitrogen pollutants in water bodies is an effective way to realize green chemistry.
Fly ash is an industrial by-product produced in the process of thermal power generation, metal smelting and heating, etc. Its large amount of stockpiling not only occupies land resources, but also may cause pollution to the environment (Xu and Shi 2018). However, fly ash is also a resource with development potential, which can be resourcefully utilized in a variety of ways. These pathways include replacing traditional materials in the field of building materials to produce bricks, concrete, and cement (Krishnaraj and Ravichandran 2021); in the field of environmental protection for flue gas treatment and adsorption of hazardous substances (Zhuang et al. 2016); in the field of agriculture as a fertilizer or soil conditioner to provide nutrients needed for plant growth; in the field of chemical engineering for the synthesis of products such as molecular sieves; and through the extraction of valuable components of fly ash, such as hollow beads, magnetic beads, and residual charcoal, alumina, etc., for high value-added utilization (Yao et al. 2015). Fly ash has a large amount of silica-alumina elements in the form of mullite and quartz (Matjie et al. 2005, Boycheva et al. 2020), and such substances are less active and cannot be directly involved in zeolite crystallization. The principle of zeolite preparation using fly ash is to utilize the abundant silicon and aluminum elements in fly ash, which are converted into zeolite by hydrothermal synthesis under alkaline conditions (Yang et al. 2019, Panitchakarn et al. 2014). Fly ash is first activated by using alkaline solutions such as sodium hydroxide to induce dissolution and activation of silica-aluminate (El-Naggar et al., 2008, Huber et al. 2018);
Then, under high temperature and pressure hydrothermal conditions, silica-aluminate ions polymerize to form the primary structural units of zeolite, which undergoes a crystallization process to generate zeolite; finally, the high value-added conversion of fly ash is achieved by removing impurities and enhancing the thermal stability and pore structure of zeolite through washing and roasting (HO 2006, Murukutti and Jena 2022). However, this process generates a large amount of wastewater and has high energy consumption. Mechanical force chemical processing of tailings is based on the principle of applying high-energy mechanical forces, such as mechanical grinding, to disrupt the crystal structure of tailings and form new surfaces and defects, thus increasing the active sites and specific surface area (Ye et al. 2025). This process may be accompanied by the breaking and rearrangement of chemical bonds, altering the chemical composition of the tailings, inducing phase transitions, promoting redox reactions, increasing the solubility of the solids, and possibly changing the surface properties of the particles (Sun et al. 2024a, Qiu et al. 2024). These changes help to improve the leaching efficiency of the metals in the tailings and the ability to participate in subsequent reactions, making tailings resource utilization more efficient. Moreover, these processes do not require high-temperature heating and do not produce waste water, waste gas, and waste residue, which can effectively realize the recycling of waste (Luo et al. 2022).
In this study, we propose to prepare zeolite materials by processing fly ash using mechanochemical method for adsorption of ammonia nitrogen in water. At the same time, we investigated the effect of NaCl, NaClO and their mixtures on the desorption and regeneration of artificial zeolites. Through the regenerated artificial zeolite's adsorption capacity of ammonia nitrogen, we evaluated the effects of different adsorbents and regeneration times on the zeolite's adsorption effect, and explored the most suitable adsorbents and regeneration times. Finally, we realized the regeneration and utilization of fly ash to prepare zeolite for ammonia nitrogen adsorption, and studied the regeneration method of zeolite after adsorption.