ion exchangers to obtain the material with desirable ion exchange properties, reproducibility and stability [1,2]. In the past few decades, a number of ion exchanger materials have been synthesized. The inorganic ion exchangers are thermally stable, while organic ion exchangers have good mechanical and chemical strength and can be applied for the treatment of large volume of waste effluents. By combining these two different materials having entirely different properties, composite ion exchanger materials are produced with unique properties which are distinct from the constituent's material. In addition to other advantages, composite ion exchangers are more stable at high temperature and radiation fields [3]. The composite ion exchangers exhibit enhanced characteristics by bridging the property gap between two divergent types of materials [4,5]. Thus, the composite ion exchanger materials have been utilized for diverse applications such as quantitative estimations by ion selective electrodes, catalysis, antimicrobial activity, bimolecular separations, chromatography, hydrometallurgy and environmental science [4][5][6][7][8]. However, there are still some major limitations. So, the efforts are continuously going on to improve the mechanical, chemical and thermal stability and their selectivity for heavy metal ions [9][10][11][12]. In this favors, the advanced composite ion exchangers with nanodomain have also been given consideration to summarize the desired properties of both inorganic and organic counter parts into single molecule. These nanocomposite ion exchangers have been developed by adding organic polymer into the matrix of inorganic precipitates by sol-gel method and have been used in environmental applications [4,[9][10][11][12][13]. Water pollution by heavy metals is an important environmental concern which is related negatively with the health and economy. Various kinds of health hazards are arising due to the contamination of heavy metals from the waste effluents of fast growing industries in the surrounding soils as well as ground and Abstract A new surfactant-based nanocomposite cation exchanger, sodium dodecyl sulfate-Th(IV) tungstate (SDS-TT) was prepared by the sol-gel method. The SDS-TT was characterized by FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM, EDS and TEM. The distribution studies for various metal ions on SDS-TT were performed in different acidic mediums. On the basis of distribution coefficient values, SDS-TT was found to be selective for Cu 2+ metal ion. SDS-TT was successfully used for the quantitative separation of Cu 2+ from the synthetic mixture, pharmaceutical formulation and brass sample. The regeneration studies were performed which showed a decrease in the recovery of Cu 2+ from 88 to 70 % after seven consecutive cycles.