Introduction: Nitrate is known as a major water pollutant. This pollutant can cause health problems such as Blue Baby syndrome in infants and cancer of the gastrointestinal tract. Lack of a comprehensive study of the methods for nitrate removal from water requires introducing recent technologies of nitrate removal, characteristics, efficiency, and the way they affect on nitrate removal and advantages and disadvantages of each. Methods: This study was carried out on the surveys accomplished in recent decades and published in databases such as Elsevier, Google Scholar, Pub med, Scopus and SID using nitrate, water resources, biological and physicochemical methods as the keywords. Results: In addition to economic efficiency, other approaches such as ion exchange, reverse osmosis, electro reduction methods, denitrification and absorption have also been respectively effective in removing nitrates. Conclusion: Regarding that removal of nitrate ion in drinking water should be in line with standards of the World Health Organization, providing an efficient method should also be dependent on considering engineering and economic aspects and regional atmospheric conditions.

Keywords: Nitrate, Potable water, Physicochemical methods, Biological methods

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