Heavy metals, due to their high toxicity, pose a serious threat to biota and the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to alleviate these metals from industrial effluents, before their discharge into water bodies. Activated carbon has been used in water purification for many decades on a final stage of treatment process. It is well-known, however that activated carbon is an expensive material. Although any carbonaceous material with high carbon content and low ash is feasible for the production of activated carbon, in practice a limited number of carbon precursors exist as the principal sources, i.e. wood, coal and coconut shells. Agricultural by-products are potentially attractive feedstocks because they are highly available and renewable raw materials and copiously generated as low-cost byproducts. Accordingly, research has been focused on the utilization of locally available biomass materials for the production of carbons with good adsorbing properties. Chemical activation with H3PO4 or phosphate salts has emerged as a competing technology.Phosphorus-containing carbon sorbent was synthesized by carbonization of pine sawdust, soaked in 10% solution of ammonium phosphate. The effect of contact time on the efficiency of Cu(II) sorption by the obtained material from the model aqueous solutions was investigated. The equilibrium in the system sorbent-sorbate was reached in 1.5 hours from the start of mixing, and half the copper content was absorbed during the first 30 minutes. Ion exchange came as the first stage, in which the low-acidic phosphate groups performed cation-exchange function. Dissociation of these groups run effectively up to pH 3,5–4,2 and was accompanied by rapid ion exchange. Sorption curves reflected it in a form of significant decrease in pH of the solution in the first minutes of sorption. However, due to gradual acidification of the solution, dissociation of phosphate functional groups was hampered and the exchange of ions was approaching to equilibrium.Experimental data were processed according to of the pseudo-first pseudo-second-order kinetic models and Weber-Morris intraparticle diffusion model. Sorption of copper by phosphorylated carbon sorbent derived from pine sawdust from aqueous solutions was quite fast and took place mainly in meso- and macropores. Limiting stage of the adsorption process was ion diffusion inside microporous space of sorbent.Kinetics of the extraction of copper ions was best described by pseudo-second order. Sorption isotherms obtained for phosphorus-containing sorbent in H- and Na-forms, as well as the original untreated pine sawdust, had a clear maximum of sorption and can be well described by Langmuir equation. During the sorption process pH of solutions fell to 3.2–3.5 and had low dependence on the initial copper concentration. Sorbent in Na-form had sorption capacity 20.6 mg/g – the highest value among the studied sorbents, the lowest one was in case of untreated sawdust – 7.7 mg/g. Efficiency of copper ions removal was investigated in the presence of Са2+ in the range of 50–970 mg/dm3. In the presence of calcium, adsorption capacity of phosphorus-containing carbon sorbent decreased by one third – from 8.8 to 5.5 mg/g. This residual calcium concentration decreases to a relatively constant values 50–75 mg/dm3, which had low dependency on its initial content. Thus, Ca2+ with increasing its concentration gradually occupied all available ion-exchange capacity, which was relatively small, and Cu(II) was displaced from the cation-exchange centers and fixed on the sorbent surface by complexation and donor-acceptor interaction.