The objective of this study is to remove the phenol from aqueous solution by using the neutralized red mud in batch adsorption technique. The study was carried out as functions of contact time, pH, initial phenol concentration, red mud dosage and effect of salt addition. The experiments demonstrated that maximum phenol removal was obtained in a wide pH range of 1-9 and it takes 10 h to attain equilibrium. The adsorption data was analyzed using the Langmuir and the Freundlich isotherm models and it was found that the Freundlich isotherm model represented the measured sorption data well. The influence of addition of salt on phenol removal depends on the relative affinity of the anions for the red mud surface and the relative concentrations of the anions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.