The primary objective of this work was to evaluate a chemically modified cellulose for the sorption efficiency and selectivity to remove cadmium from spiked high-hardness groundwater. Heterogeneous esterification of cellulose with succinic anhydride in toluene under basic conditions has proceeded very efficiently to yield the succinylated cellulose (SC) with fairly high DS value, as confirmed by FTIR and solid-state MAS C-13 NMR spectroscopies. Deprotonation of the free carboxylic acid group was achieved by alkaline treatment of SC with saturated NaHCO3 aqueous solution. Batch experiments were carried out on the resulting sodic material (NaSC) to examine its cadmium-removing capability in both distilled water (DW) and spiked groundwater (GW). The results obtained from the sorption characteristics (kinetics, isotherms and pH effect) have revealed that NaSC material is particularly effective in removing cadmium from both DW and GW solutions, with a maximum uptake of 185.2 and 178.6 mg g(-1), respectively. These comparable sorption capacities strongly suggest that NaSC sorbent is highly selective to heavy metal over alkaline earth cations (Ca2+ and Mg2+) and therefore less susceptible to interference from background ions, naturally present in groundwater. On the other hand, cadmium sorption is shown to decrease with a decrease in pH which is indubitably inherent to the competing proton during the ion-exchange process. Furthermore, the material has proven to be efficiently regenerable by using a NaCl brine solution. Thus, the use of the sorbent sequentially to the first regeneration led to nearly no attenuation in the material's capacity for cadmium-removal. Finally, the sorption effectiveness of NaSC is compared to those of other low-cost sorbents so far reported in the literature. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.