In this study, a novel binary oxide adsorbent of Al2O3-ZrO2 was prepared via coprecipitation followed by calcination method, and the calcination temperatures were investigated. The adsorbent was characterized by XRD, EDX and XPS. The batch adsorption experiments were carried out at different parameters, such as solution pH, adsorbent dose, contact time, initial fluoride concentration and adsorption temperature, to evaluate the fluoride removal performance. The results showed that the adsorption isotherm was better described by the linear Langmuir model, and a maximum adsorption capacity was 114.54 mg/g. The adsorption kinetics was well fitted by the linear pseudo-second-order, and the correlation coefficient value (R-2) was 0.997. The thermodynamic parameters of Delta H-0, Delta S-0 and Delta G(0) were calculated, which showed that the fluoride adsorption process was spontaneous and exothermic. And the possible adsorption mechanism of the adsorbent for fluoride could involve the ligand-exchange and ion-exchange based on the results in the study. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.