Palm oil fruit shells were evaluated as a new bioadsorbent to eliminate toxic copper from water and wastewater. Without any chemical treatment, palm oil fruit shells were washed, dried and grounded into powder (<75 mu m) for use in the experiments. Characterization showed mesopore based bioadsorbent was prepared from palm oil fruit shells. The results indicate that the highest Cu removal efficiency was found in an aqueous solution with pH of 6.5. The equilibrium sorption capacity of copper was significantly high (between 28 and 60 mg/g) at room temperature. Nonlinear regression analyses for isotherm models revealed that three-parameter isotherms had a better fit to the experimental data (R-2 > 0.994) than that of two-parameter isotherms. The copper sorption system was heterogeneous as the values of exponents were lying between 0 and 1. The highly correlated pseudo-second-order kinetics model (R-2 > 0.998) ascertained the applicability of copper removal by palm oil fruit shells. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.