Abstract. Nowadays, with the environmental regulations becoming more and more stringent and growing pressure on the conservation of mineral resources, recycling has been gaining interest to develop economically-viable refining technology. As the costs of the wastewater disposal increase (especially in the metal finishing industry) more emphasis is being placed on the recovery and recycling of valuable chemicals contained within these streams. In this study, a commercial plating plant filter waste (PPFW) was examined as an alternative source for the recovery of Ni as a nickel rich precipitate. The treatment tests performed by H 2 SO 4 leaching method showed that dissolution amounts of metals such as Ni, Cu, Zn and Cr were affected by leaching time, temperature and acid concentration. Although the dissolution of metallic compounds almost was completed within the one hour of the extraction time, a rapid and higher dissolution amounts of Ni within the first minute of the leaching process (approximately 81% of the total extractable amount of Ni is extracted at the beginning period for 24 °C) indicated that the usage of this waste as a source of Ni has an advantage compared to Ni recovery from natural ores. A kinetic study carried out to clarify the dissolution of Ni, showed that a series of rate controlling steps, both chemical and diffusion reactions, was involved in the observed kinetic. After leaching, the filtered solution was subjected to two stages of controlled precipitation carried out at a pH of about 4-5.5 and about 8 to produce the solids containing non-nickel and nickel respectively. The precipitation test performed by NaOH or MgO showed that almost all of the dissolved Ni ions were seperated from the solution. Based on the XRD and IR analysis, it was found out that a final precipitate, obtained by the use of NaOH, could be characterized as a disordered α-Ni(OH) or as a blend of α and β-Ni(OH) 2 , as for the MgO, the precipitate composed of mainly β-(Ni(OH) 2 ) phase and/or α-(Ni(OH) 2 ) phases.