In this paper, rice straw was thermochemically modified with citric acid (CA) as esterifying agent. Two introduced free carboxyl groups of esterified rice straw were further loaded with sodium ion to yield potentially biodegradable cationic sorbent. In order to investigate the effect of chemical modification on the cationic dye sorption of rice straw, the removal capacities of native and modified rice straw sorbing a cationic dye (malachite green) from aqueous solution were compared. The effects of various experimental parameters (e.g. initial pH, sorbent dose, dye concentration, contact time) were investigated. For modified rice straw (MRS), the malachite green (MG) removal percentage came up to the maximum value beyond pH 4. For the 250 mg/l of MG solution, the 1.5 g/l or up of MRS could almost completely remove the dye from aqueous solution. Under the condition of 2.0 g/l sorbent used, the percentage of MG sorbed on MRS kept above 93% over a range from 100 to 500 mg/l of MG concentration. The sorption isotherms fitted the Langmuir or Freundlich models. The sorption equilibriums were reached at about 10 h. The sorption processes followed the pseudo-first-order rate kinetics. After chemical modification, the intraparticle diffusion rate constant (k(id)) was obviously increased. The results in this study indicated that MRS was an excellent sorbent for removal of MG from aqueous solution. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.