A lot of materials such as clays and polymers have been introduced for the detection and uptake of heavy metals in aqueous media but the prospective for industrial development, environmental supplement and health monitoring are still limited. Therefore, nanohybrid has been synthesized by simple growth of Mn3O4 on cellulose and the morphological and physiochemical structure of nanohybrid was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy. Interestingly, FESEM showed aggregated nanoparticles with an average size of 30 nm. From application point of view, the nanohybrid was investigated for the sorption study towards Cu2+, Cd2+, Co2+, Cr3+, Fe3+, Ni2+, Zn2+ and Zr4+ by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. Nanohybrid was most selective towards Cr3+ and showed the highest sorption capacity for Cr3+ which was found to be 61.0 mg g(-1) while the other metals under study follow the order Zn2+ > Fe3+ > Cd2+ > Zr4+ > Ni2+ > Co2+ > Cu2+. Moreover, adsorption isotherm data also confirmed that the adsorption process was mainly monolayer onto a surface containing a finite number of adsorption sites. Data of adsorption kinetic model demonstrated that the adsorption of Cr3+ onto the nanohybrid obeyed a pseudo second-order kinetic model. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.