Removal and recovery of phosphorus from wastewater is important to manage the environmental and economic issues such as eutrophication of surface waters and depletion of phosphorus resources. Phosphorus removal from wastewater has been widely investigated using several techniques including physical, chemical precipitation and biological processes. Recently, the removal of phosphate from aqueous solutions by adsorption has attracted much attention due to severe emission standards and also high efficiency of this technique. Adsorption is an environmental friendly, simple, feasible and economical method for removal of phosphate from wastewater, leading to a practical recycling and reuse of phosphorus. The key problem in phosphorus adsorption method is finding an efficient and low-cost sorbent. Clays are low-cost and easily available minerals that due to their individual properties were used as general adsorbents in wastewater treatment. In this study, bentonite and hydrogel ® (a commercial material produced from bentonite) were used for removal of phosphate from aqueous solutions in batch and column tests. Different effective parameters on phosphate removal such as equilibrium time, pH, initial phosphorus concentration and amount of sorbent were investigated. The effect of some colloid surface modification treatments on phosphate sorption of the sorbents was also studied. The sorbents were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray ?uorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The raw bentonite and hydrogel had low affinity for phosphate adsorption, since the negative charges of clay surfaces prevent the electrostatic attraction of phosphate anion. In addition, the relatively stable siloxane groups on the surfaces of clays do not permit the adsorption of phosphate through ligand exchange processes.