A new effective process to improve the utilization of industrial fluorosilicic acid of phosphate fertilizer by-product has been investigated to comprehensive application of the silicon and fluorine source. Two-step ammoniation was applied to recover high-quality silica. The recovered silica can be used to hydrothermal synthesize ZSM-5 zeolite without impurity phase contamination, which was confirmed by XRD, TG, SEM, BET and EDS characteristic techniques. It was found that with the increase of SiO2/Al2O3 ratio and the extension of reaction time, the crystal type transform from the orthorhombic to the monoclinic phase. The impurity fluorine content of the recovered SiO2 from H2SiF6 has great influence on the hydrothermal process for ZSM-5 crystal structure formation. Moreover, the increase of fluorine ions content in the hydrothermal process can control the crystal morphology and size of synthesized ZSM-5. Catalytic properties of synthesized HZSM-5 with different SiO2/Al2O3 ratio in transalkylation of toluene and 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene show good and stable catalytic performance. The ZSM-5 synthesized with recovered silica source exhibits similar catalyst life as the performance of small particle size HZSM-5, because the ZSM-5 synthesized with the silica source from industrial hexafluorosilicic acid prefers a thin disk crystal along the b axis direction, which shortens the diffusion distance of generated products. (C) 2016 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.