%L scholars7398 %J Procedia Engineering %O cited By 18; Conference of 4th International Conference on Process Engineering and Advanced Materials, ICPEAM 2016 ; Conference Date: 15 August 2016 Through 17 August 2016; Conference Code:131138 %R 10.1016/j.proeng.2016.06.485 %D 2016 %K Design of experiments; Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy; Mesoporous materials; Nitrates; Process engineering; Scanning electron microscopy; Solutions; Surface properties, Adsorption experiment; Amine-functionalized mesoporous silica; Experimental conditions; Functionalized MCM-41; Nitrate concentration; Nitrate removal; Quadratic modeling; Response surface methodology, Adsorption %X In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the experimental conditions in nitrate removal processes using 20 AEPTMS amine-functionalized MCM-41 as the adsorbent. The adsorbent was synthesized via co-condensation method and then characterized by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Subsequently, total 19 adsorption experiments with different experimental conditions generated by the Design of Experiments (DoE) software have been conducted. The experimental results were fitted well with the quadratic model suggested by the software and the R2 value obtained was 0.9935. It was found that the highest percentage removal of nitrate was 70 obtained at initial nitrate concentration of 0.25 mM, adsorbent dosage of 0.50 g and contact time of 1 h. On the other hand, the optimum nitrate removal of 56 was obtained at the optimum conditions suggested by the software, with the initial nitrate concentration of 0.25 mM, adsorbent dosage of 0.124 g, and contact time of 1 h. © 2016 The Authors. %P 1239-1246 %V 148 %I Elsevier Ltd %A Y.L. Lau %A Y.F. Yeong %T Optimization of Nitrate Removal from Aqueous Solution by Amine-functionalized MCM-41 Using Response Surface Methodology