Heavy metals are one of the most important and problematic pollutants in the industrial wastewaters. So far, different methods have been used to eliminate these contaminants from the effluents, but each of them has their own limitations in application due to the high cost of treatment and production of chemical sludge. In the meanwhile, adsorption process has been used as an efficient method for removal of different pollutants from waste liquid and gas streams. In the present study, hydroxyapatite ceramic foams were fabricated and used as an efficient and inexpensive adsorbent to remove lead ions from aqueous solutions. By evaluating the effects of the hydroxyapatite content of the initial suspension and the density of the polyurethane foam used for ceramic foam preparation on the structure and porosity of the ceramic foam, polymeric foam with the density of 12 kg.m-3 and hydroxyapatite suspension containing 35 wt% of hydroxyapatite powder were selected as the optimal conditions for making adsorbents. The average percentage of total porosity and efficient porosity of the ceramic foam prepared under optimal conditions were 92.67 and 92.04, respectively. In the adsorption experiments the effects of three process characteristics including pH of the feed solution, flow rate of the feed solution through the adsorption column, and lead concentration in the feed solution on the lead removal percentage were investigated. To reduce the number of required tests and determine the contribution of each parameter on the removal percentage, Taguchi method was used to design the experiments. According to the results, pH=3.5, flow rate of 0.2 lit.min-1, and initial lead concentration of 50 ppm were obtained as optimal values for the experiments. Under optimal conditions, the percentage of lead removal by the adsorbent was 95%. Isotherm model studies showed that adsorption of lead ions can be well described by the Langmuir model. The maximum adsorption capacity obtained by the Langmuir model was equal to 104.04 mg.g-1. Also, the kinetic studies showed that the experimental data can be modeled by the Pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Keywords: Adsorption; Hydroxyapatite; Heavy metals; Ceramic foam; Taguchi method.