Chemical and mechanical treatments have been used to obtain cellulose microfibrils using bleached eucalyptus pulp as raw material. Chemical microfibrils have been obtained with the combination of three chemical treatments: mercerization with NaOH, acetylating with nitric acid and acetic acid, and finally hydrolysis with sulphuric acid. Moreover, mechanical microfibrils have been obtained by high pressure homogenizer. All the microfibrils have been characterized by FTIR, TGA, contact angle measurements, AFM and XRD. Finally, the microfibrils were modified to enhance their adsorption capacities obtaining values up to 610 mu mol/g for trichlorobenzene when using mechanical microfibrils. The adsorption capacity of mechanical microfibrils was determined for various organic solutes and a pseudo-second order kinetic model and Langmuir isotherms were established. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.