High purity amorphous silica extracted from rice husk ash (RHA) was utilized for synthesising a low cost, novel mesoporous adsorbent (RHS-MCM-41) for removal of cationic dye brilliant green (BG) from water. Transforming silica to mesoporous aluminosilicate structure, resulted ≈ 9 fold enhancement of surface area generating negatively charged surface active sites. Adsorbent was characterized with Small Angle XRD, SEM, EDS, Nitrogen adsorption-desorption analysis and FTIR spectroscopy.Equilibrium state was achieved very fast (within 15 min) following pseudo-second-order kinetics (k s =315x10 -4 g/mg min) with a very high adsorption capacity of 250 mg/g. Variation in adsorbent surface functionality revealed that presence of negative charge centres favour BG adsorption. Elovich model fitting the system explicated involvement of chemisorption process. Intra-particle diffusion models elucidate two step diffusion and saturation stage. Equilibrium batch adsorption data are best explained with Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm models.

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