Azo dyes have been shown to damage ecosystems when discharged into water systems serious health risks to humans. This study has focused on the applications of nanomaterials in environmental remediation especially the treatment of industrial waste water and the polluted underground water. A low cost and effective adsorption method used for color removal from wastewater using a Ni-Al-Ce mixed metal oxide nanocomposite as an adsorbent for dye decontamination from wastewaters. The nanocomposite was prepared using the precipitation and calcination methods and fully characterized. As-prepared adsorbent was utilized for the sorption of Direct Red 23 (DR23), an azo dye, from the aqueous solutions. Furthermore, the adsorption of dye in a batch system was investigated according to different parameters such as pH and temperature with frequent sampling at time duration of 3 hr and their spectroscopic records were studied. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms and two kinetic models of pseudo first-order and pseudo second-order were used to investigate the experimental data. In this study, the data have better correlation with the pseudo second-order kinetic equation and the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. In addition, the reaction has endothermic chemisorption.