Persistent aromatic pollutants are widely found in the effluents from the pharmaceutical, petrochemical, dyestuff, pesticide, and other industries. Because of their high solubility in water, they transport into the environment widely and do harm to human health. Many studies have focused on the efficient elimination of organic pollutants from aqueous solutions such as by photocatalysis,[1] adsorption,[2] and electrolysis.[3] Among these methods, adsorption techniques are simple and work effectively because of the preconcentration and solidification of organic pollutants on adsorbents. However, the adsorption capacities of present materials are not high enough. It is important to develop new adsorbents with high adsorption capacities for persistent organic pollutant management in the environment. The high surface area of nanomaterials brings new prospects for the management of organic pollutants, for example, carbon nanotubes are found to work effectively to remove organic contaminants.[4] Compared with carbon nanotubes, graphene is more exciting. Graphene has a large theoretical specific surface area (2620 m 2 g− 1),[5] which indicates its potential for the adsorption of organic pollutants in environmental pollution management. However, to our knowledge, no report has addressed this topic, which is probably attributable to: 1) the strong aggregation of graphene sheets, which reduces the surface area of graphene significantly, and 2) the absence of effective ways to disperse graphene in aqueous solution, which makes it difficult to advance in pollution management. Herein, we introduce a kind of sulfonated graphene (around 3 nm thick) with high dispersion properties in aqueous solution capable of absorbing naphthalene and 1-naphthol aromatic pollutants from aqueous solutions. The adsorption capability of the prepared sulfonated graphene nanomaterials approaches∼ 2.3–2.4 mmol g− 1 for naphthalene and 1-naphthol, which is one of the highest capabilities of today’s nanomaterials, indicating their great potential in environmental pollution management. The synthesis of sulfonated graphene is performed by several steps as described in Figure 1A. Graphene oxides are prepared from graphite by using a modified Hummers method, and then the prereduction of graphene oxide is performed with sodium borohydride at 80 C for 1 h to remove the majority of the oxygen functionality. The sulfonation of graphene oxide is then carried out with the aryl diazonium salt of sulfanilic acid in an ice bath for 2 h, followed by post-reduction with hydrazine (at 100 C for 24 h) to remove any remaining oxygen functionality.[6] The obtained products of sulfonated graphene are shown in Figure 1 B and C. It is obvious that sheets of sulfonated graphene could be produced in large size and over a large area. Moreover, the thickness of the sulfonated graphene is only∼ 3 nm, ie, three or four-layered graphene sheets. The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) patterns of graphite, graphene oxide, and sulfonated graphene (Figure 2A) indicate that the c-axis spacing increases from 0.34 nm (corresponding to the diffraction peak at 2 θ= 26.40) to 0.87 nm (corresponding to the diffraction peak at 2 θ= 10.03) during the oxidation process because of the creation of the oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface of graphene oxide.[7] The reappearance of the weak and broad diffraction peak at 2 θ= 26.16 is attributable to the rather limited ordering (only a few layers) in each sulfonated graphene sheet and the uneven interlayer spacing over the whole sulfonated graphene sample.[8] The same interlayer spacing of the sulfonic graphene as for the pure graphite is a result of the …