In order to develop efficient and environment benign sorbents for water purification, the macroscopic multifunctional magnetite-reduced graphene oxides aerogels (M-RGOs) with strong interconnected networks were prepared via a one pot solvothermal method of graphene oxide sheets adsorbing iron ions and in situ simultaneous deposition of Fe3O4 nanoparticles in ethylene glycol or triethylene glycol solvents. Such M-RGOs exhibited excellent sorption capacity to different contaminants, including oils, organic solvents, arsenite ions, as well as dyes. In addition, it was demonstrated that the M-RGOs could be used as column packing materials to manufacture column for water purification by filtration. The method proposed was proved to be versatile to induce synergistic assembly of RGO sheets with other functional metal oxides nanoparticles and as a kind of broad-spectrum sorbents for removing different types of contaminants in water purification, simultaneously. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.