Phenol is a typical organic pollutant in industrial wastewater and efficient adsorptive removal of phenol from aqueous solution has attracted many attentions in recent years. In the present study, a diethylenetriamine-modified hypercrosslinked styrene-divinylbenzene (PS) resin, HJ-M05, was synthesized, characterized and evaluated for adsorptive removal of phenol from aqueous solution, and two typical commercial polymeric adsorbents, Amberlite XAD-4 and XAD-7, were employed as references. The equilibrium capacity on HJ-M05 was much larger than those on XAD-4. XAD-7 and the precursor, HJ-M05. The degree of the surface energetic heterogeneity of HJ-M05 was proven to be higher than XAD-4 and XAD-7 while the adsorbate-adsorbate interaction of the adsorbed phenol molecules on HJ-M05 was much less than that on XAD-4 and XAD-7. The kinetic data on HJ-M05 could be well plotted by the micropore diffusion model while those on XAD-4 and XAD-7 could not be fitted by this model. Thomas and Yoon models were more suitable for describing the dynamic data than the Clark model and the dynamic capacities on HJ-M05, XAD-4 and XAD-7 were calculated to be 201.7, 178.1, 107.5 and 74.80 mg/g dry resin, respectively. 15.0 BV (1 BV = 10 ml) 1% of sodium hydroxide could regenerate the HJ-M05 resin column completely and the dynamic desorbed amount was almost equal to the dynamic adsorption amount. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.