One of the most important properties of chitosan, a derivative of chitin, is that it is able to chelate with certain heavy metal ions, and this property can be applied to process waste water containing heavy metal ions. In this research, using BTCA/CA as a crosslinking reagent with chitosan added, cotton fabrics were cured and allowed to undergo an adsorption reaction in CuSO4 and ZnSO4 solutions. The effect of different curing temperatures and time, as well as different adsorptive temperatures and time, were studied. The cotton processed fabrics were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared analysis (FTIR), scanning electronic microscope (SEM), and thermal gravity analysis (TGA) to study the crosslinking reaction with the cotton-processed fabrics. The results indicate: (1) the BTCA/CA-processed cotton fabrics with an addition of chitosan have a better adsorptive capacity than the processed fabrics without chitosan; (2) the crosslinked fabrics are better in adsorbing copper ions as chitosan concentration, curing temperature and time, and adsorptive temperature and time increase; (3) the adsorption rate of copper and zinc ions are linearly proportional to the changes of time, so that the slope shows that the adsorption rate of crosslinked fabrics for copper ions is faster than for zinc ions. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.