Low cost, high adsorptivity, fast regeneration and excellent reusability are strongly recommended for a qualified adsorbent used in removing heavy metals from practical wastewater. A sponge-like polysiloxane-graphene oxide (PS-GO) gel adsorbent for removing lead and cadmium from wastewater has been prepared by simple one-step sal-gel method. The maximum sorption capacity of Pb(10 achieves as high as 256 mg/g. PS-GO gel adsorbent exhibits an excellent reusability because of its remarkable mechanical strength and highly efficient desorption/regeneration. In the static treatment process, after five cycles, Pb(II) in actual industrial effluent at 3.225 mg/L could be reduced to below 0.01 mg/L, still holding over 99% removal efficiency. Significantly, in the dynamic treatment process using a fixed-bed column packed with PS-GO gel, the treatment volume of wastewater is as high as 720 bed volume (BV) (8143 mL) for Pb(II) and 480 BV (5429 mL) for Cd(II) with producing only 11.31 mL eluent in each cycle. It should be stressed that the in situ regeneration of PS-GO gel adsorbent in fixed-bed column is operationally feasible and the treatment technology has the advantage of producing "zero" amount of sludge. This work has taken a key step closer to the treatment of actual heavy metals wastewater based on adsorption technology in large scale. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.