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Tremendous efforts have been dedicated to developing sorbents for water remediation due to their high efficiency and non-secondary pollution. However, the majority of sorbents still face the challenges of complex processing, low mechanical strength and volume absorption. Hence, the functional hydrothermal carbonization coatings (HTCCs) were prepared on carbon fibers in carbon fiber braid via a facile hydrothermal carbonization process of widely sourced carbohydrate to obtain a robust sorbent, which possessed the controllable microstructure and composition for various requirements of water remediation. The gradient surface structure of carbon fiber braid with interior smooth coatings carbon fibers and exterior rough surface could be fabricated at pH value of 1. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid had superior yield strength and compressive strength. By regulating the reaction process, the yield strength could range from 0.044 MPa to 0.235 MPa and the max compressive strength change from 0.198 MPa to 1.113 MPa. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid showed excellent adsorption for Rhodamine B with a high removal degree of 98.5%, which kept more than 90% even after 10 squeezing adsorption cycles. The HTCCs-carbon fiber braid could be adjusted to effectively absorb oil pollutants from water by a facile heat treatment. After heat treatment, the HTCCs-carbon fiber braid exhibited excellent volume absorption capacity for contaminants, which could change from 83.9% to 88.5%. Thus, the HTCCs-carbon fiber braid prepared by a green, high-efficiency and low-cost process has great potential for sorption multiple contaminations in water by virtue of the combination of controllable carbonaceous coatings and robust carbon fiber braid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]