In this paper, the multi-carboxyl-functionalized silica gel was prepared by surface grafting method and applied for the removal of Cu (II), Cd (II), Ni (II) and Zn (II) from aqueous solution. The adsorbent was characterized by FT-IR, thermogravimetry, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area measurement and elemental analysis, and it proved that the organic functional group, carboxyl group, was grafted successfully onto the silica gel surface. The effect of solution pH on removal efficiencies of Cu (II), Cd (II), Ni (II) and Zn (II) was investigated and it was found that with the exception of Zn (II), the removal efficiencies of the rest of metal ions increased with the increasing of pH in the solution, the maximum removal efficiency occurred at pH 6.0, whereas the maximum removal efficiency for Zn (II) was found to be at pH 7.0. Adsorption equilibrium data were well fitted to Langmuir than Freundlich isotherm model and the maximum adsorption capacity for Cu (II), Cd (II), Ni (II) and Zn (II) was 47.07, 41.48, 30.80 and 39.96 mg/g, respectively. Competitive adsorption experiments demonstrated that the adsorbent material had excellent adsorption amount and high affinity for the Cu (II) in the binary systems. In addition, the column experiments were used to investigate stability and reusability of the adsorbent, the dynamic adsorption performance, and desorption of metal ions absorbed from the adsorbent. The results confirmed that the adsorbent presents good dynamic adsorption performance for Cu (II), Cd (II), Ni (II) and Zn (II) and these metal ions adsorbed were easy to be desorbed from the adsorbent. The adsorption capacities of metal ions did not present an obvious decrease after five cycles of adsorption-desorption. Crown Copyright (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.