The adsorption ability of a powdered activated carbons (PAC) derived from walnut shell was investigated in an attempt to produce more economic and effective sorbents for the control of Hg(II) ion from industrial liquid streams. Carbonaceous sorbents derived from local walnut shell, were prepared by chemical activation methods using ZnCl2 as activating reagents. Adsorption of Hg(II) from aqueous solutions was carried out under different experimental conditions by varying treatment time, metal ion concentration, pH and solution temperature. It was shown that Hg(II) uptake decreases with increasing pH of the solution. The proper choice of preparation conditions were resulted in microporous activated carbons with different BET surface areas of 780 (Carbon A, 1:0.5 ZnCl2) and 803 (Carbon B, 1: 1 ZnCl2) m(2)/g BET surface area. The monolayer adsorption capacity of these particular adsorbents were obtained as 151.5 and 100.9 mg/g for carbons A and B, respectively. It was determined that Hg(II) adsorption follows both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms as well as pseudo-second-order kinetics. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.