In the present work, the adsorption ability of sugarcane bagasse to remove oil by-products from aqueous solution was evaluated. The objective was treating the contaminated wastewater while enriching the bagasse for its later use as fuel in boilers. Adsorption experiments were carried out in an agitated reactor at room temperature to obtain kinetic curves and adsorption isotherms of gasoline and n-heptane on sugarcane bagasse. The results showed the great potential of bagasse as an adsorbent, since it was able to adsorb up to 99% of gasoline and 90% of n-heptane in solutions containing about 5% of these contaminants. In the adsorption kinetics of gasoline, the equilibrium was reached after just 5 min. This result shows that the adsorption is very favorable. Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and D-R models did not describe well the adsorption behavior obtained for these systems. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.