Palygorskite is a hydrous magnesium-aluminum-silicate clay mineral, featuring a distinctive chain-layered crystal structure. It demonstrates outstanding application performance in numerous domains such as colloids, catalysis, and adsorption. In this research, various types of acids were employed to modify palygorskite, regulating its structure by dissolving the cations in the octahedral layer. With Cu²⁺ as the target contaminant, the effect laws of diverse modification conditions on the adsorption of Cu²⁺ by palygorskite were investigated via static adsorption experiments. The structures of palygorskite before and after modification were characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), N₂ adsorption, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and thermogravimetry (TG). The research findings indicate that after acid modification, the impurities in palygorskite decrease and micropore volume increases, significantly enhancing the adsorption capacity for Cu²⁺. Moreover, the HCl modified palygorskite achieves the best adsorption effect under the conditions of a reaction time of 120 min, a reaction temperature of 60 ℃ and a solution pH value of 7, and maximum adsorption capacity is 70.64 mg/g. The results of this study hold significant research implications for the application of palygorskite in the field of environmental governance.