A carbonaceous sorbent derived from the fruit shell of Indian almond (Terminalia catappa) by sulfuric acid treatment was used for the removal of mercury(II) from aqueous solution. Sorption of mercury depends on the pH of the aqueous solution with maximum uptake occurring in the pH range of 5-6. The kinetics of sorption conformed well to modified second order model among the other kinetic models (pseudo first order and pseudo second order) tested. The Langmuir and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models defined the equilibrium data precisely compared to Freundlich model and the monolayer sorption capacity obtained was 94.43 mg/g. Sorption capacity increased with increase in temperature and the thermodynamic parameters, Delta H degrees, Delta S degrees and Delta G degrees, indicated the Hg(II) sorption to be endothermic and spontaneous with increased randomness at the solid-solution inter-face. An optimum carbon dose of 4 g/l was required for the maximum uptake of Hg(H) from 30 mg/l and the mathematical relationship developed showed a correlation of 0.94 between experimental and calculated percentage removals for any carbon dose studied. About 60% of Hg(II) adsorbed was recovered from the spent carbon at pH 1.0, while 94% of it was desorbed using 1.0% KI solution. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All fights reserved.