Chitosan is a novel glucosamine biopolymer derived from the shells of marine organisms. This biopolymer is very attractive for heavy metal ion separations from wastewater because it is selective for toxic transition metal ions over less toxic alkali or alkane earth metal ions. Highly porous, 3-mm chitosan beads were prepared by an aqueous phase-inversion technique for casting gel beads followed by freeze drying. In the attempt to simultaneously improve material properties and adsorption capacity, chitosan was chemically modified by 1) homogeneous acylation of amine groups with nonanoyl chloride before bead casting, and 2) heterogeneous crosslinking of linear chitosan chains with the bifunctional reagent glutaric dialdehyde (GA) after bead casting but before freeze drying. The random addition of Ca hydrocarbon side chains to about 7% of the amine groups on uncrosslinked chitosan beads via N-acylation improved the saturation adsorption capacity from 169 to 216 mg Cd2+/g-bead at saturation (pH 6.5, 25 degrees C) but only slightly reduced solubility in acid solution. Crosslinking of the N-acylated chitosan beads with 0.125 to 2.5 wt% GA in the crosslinking bath increased the internal surface area from 40 to 224 m(2)/g and rendered the beads insoluble in 1 M acetic acid (pH 2.36). However, crosslinking of the N-acylated chitosan beads reduced the saturation adsorption capacity to 136 mg Cd2+/g-bead at 0.75 wt% GA and 86 mg Cd2+/g-bead at 2.5 wt% GA. Crosslinking also significantly reduced the compression strength. There was no clear relationship between internal surface area and adsorption capacity, suggesting that the adsorbed cadmium was not uniformly loaded into the bead.