Water is the key element for all the living species including human beings and it is needed for various purposes in agriculture, domestic use and industrial operations. In view of these, its quality is of significance in all the aspects of human life. The rapidly increasing population, change in life pattern combined with development in various spheres, lead to depletion and overexploitation of the water resources besides impairment of the water quality due to adding of contaminants to the water body. The development of cost-effective, efficient, and robust materials and techniques for treating the contaminated water is the utmost need of the water industry. Traditional water/wastewater treatment technologies remain relatively expensive. Moreover the complex methods involved are ineffective for providing adequate safe water to the increasing needs for water coupled with stringent health guidelines and emerging contaminants. In this research area, a wide spectrum of carbonaceous and biomass materials before and after modifications is under development and investigations for the removal of different contaminants in water such as phenolic, chlorinated hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls, organic sulfur compounds, aliphatic hydrocarbons (TPH) and pharmaceutical active compounds are progressing.