This paper reports the use of a pellet of adsorbent made from water treatment sludge (S) and acid activated water treatment sludge (SH) for removal of fluoride in the batch equilibration technique. The influence of pH, adsorbent dosage, temperature and effect of other ions were employed to find out the feasibility of acid activated adsorbent to remove fluoride to the permissible concentration of 0.7 mg/L. The results from the adsorption isotherm followed both Langmuir and Freundlich models and the highest fluoride removal was found for adsorbent activated with acetic acid at 2.0 mol/L. The optimum adsorbent dosage was found at 40 g/L, 0.01 mol/L acid activated adsorbent which was able to adsorb fluoride from 10 down to 0.11 mg/L. The adsorption capacity was decreased when the temperature increased. This revealed that the adsorption of fluoride on SH was exothermic. In the presence of nitrate and carbonate ions in the aqueous solution, fluoride removal efficiency of SH decreased from 94.4% to 86.6% and 90.8%, respectively. However, there is no significant effect in the presence of sulfate and chloride ions. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.