An aminated chelating fiber (AF) with high adsorption capacity for mercury ions was prepared by grafting copolymerization of acrylonitrile onto polypropylene fiber, followed by aminating with chelating molecule diethylenetriamine. Effects of reaction conditions such as temperature, reaction time, bath ratio and dosage of catalyst on the grafting yield were studied. Chemical structure, tensile strength and thermal stability of AF were characterized. The adsorption performances for mercury were evaluated by batch adsorption experiments and kinetic experiments. The results show that AF is effective for the removal of mercury over a wide range of pH. The chelating fiber also shows much higher adsorption capacities for mercury, the equilibrium adsorption amount could be as high as 657.9 mg/g for mercury. The high adsorption capacity of Hg2+ on AF is resulted from the strong chelating interaction between amine groups and mercury ions. Two amine groups coordinate with one mercury ion could be speculated from the adsorption capacity and amine group content on AF. The kinetic adsorption results indicate that the adsorption rates of AF for mercury are very rapid. Furthermore, the residual concentration was less than 1 mu g/L with feed concentration of mercury below I mg/L, which can meet the criterion of drinking water, which indicates that the chelating fiber prepared in this study could be applied to low-level Hg contaminated drinking water purification. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.