A new route to prepare zeolitic material was introduced in this work. Compared with traditional methods, the new route showed lower energy consume. The effect of pre-treatment conditions on structure and crystalline phase was investigated, revealing that the mullite crystalline phase in fly ash could be converted to amorphous phase by alkali at low temperature. The removal performance of heavy metal ions on designed material was also investigated, and we found that the intermediate product showed higher adsorption capacity on Ni2+ than zeolite A.