${SO_4}^{2-}$ ions present in industrial waste water if combined with other metal ions in the water can cause serious scale problem in a transporting pipe. In this study therefore ${SO_4}^{2-}$ ions in an acidic solution have been removed by using surface active glasses. Glasses with various compositions of $SiO_2-Na_2O-B_2O_3-RO$ (R=Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) system were reacted in a ${SO_4}^{2-}$ ion-containing solution with various pHs ranging from 1 to 4 for various time the reacted glass surfaces were analyzed by XRD and SEM and all ions in the reacted solution were also measured ${SO_4}^{2-}$ ions in the solution were combined with divalent ions leached out of glass and precipitated on the glass surface as sulfate crystals. In this was the surface ion could be removed from the acidic solution. The sulfate ion removal capacity is closely related to the solubility product con-stants of the newly formed sulfate crystals. Almost no sulfate crystal was formed on the MgO-containing glass while sulfate crystals were easily formed on the glass containing either SrO or BaO This indicates that those glasses have strong removal efficiency of ${SO_4}^{2-}$ ions from the solution.