Abstract Demand for freshwater increases day by day as impurity increases due to the industrial, domestic and municipal waste in the water. Inappropriate disposal of coal fly ash (CFA) is not eco-friendly, therefore the need is to convert it into some beneficial material like zeolite. Zeolite-based composites with metal oxides show high cation interchange capacity, fast adsorption, and high efficiency for the removal of wastewater pollutants. In this research work, metal oxide along with zeolite (derived for CFA) was prepared. Metal oxide (WO₃) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) based zeolite composite was used adsorption enhanced photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B dye. Ternary composite (zeolite/WO₃/Fe₃O₄) was characterized using a scanning electron microscope, x-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The bandgap energy of composite was estimated using Tauc plot method from the data obtained after UV–visible spectroscopy. The behavior of composite under acidic and basic conditions was analyzed using pH_pzc of the composite. Influencing parameters like pH, dye concentration, contact time, and catalyst dosage was optimized under ultraviolet irradiations (254 nm). The results show that maximum degradation was achieved with zeolite/WO₃/Fe₃O₄ composite under optimized conditions of pH = 7, catalyst dosage = 10 mg/100 ml, RhB concentration 10 ppm, and time 60 min. The first-order kinetic model was best fitted to the experimental data. RSM was used as a statistical tool to analyze the data.