Adsorption is an important technology for the removal of heavy metals from industrial effluents. Efficient regeneration of exhausted adsorbents is essential for improving the applicability of different adsorbents. In this work an adsorptive polyacrylonitrile-based hydrogel was characterized and investigated in terms of adsorption/regeneration using both conventional chemical and electrical-assisted regeneration techniques. The hydrogel characterization includes FTIR, XRD, SEM, EDAX, porosity, and electrical conductivity. Hydrogel performance in adsorption and conventional chemical regeneration was tested. Further, electrically-assisted regeneration using a special design cell was also investigated. The maximum adsorption capacities for chromium and nickel were 8.082, and 17.437 mg/g, respectively. The isotherm data fitted Freundlich, while kinetic data fitted pseudo-second-order model. Conventional chemical desorption showed regeneration efficiency of 15.58, and 27.27 % for chromium and nickel, respectively. While, the electrically-assisted regeneration showed much higher values of 51.6, and 98.3 % for chromium and nickel, respectively indicating the merit of using electrically-assisted chemical regeneration for enhancing heavy metals adsorbing hydrogel applicability.