The pollution of water by heavy metals has received great attention with respect to their high toxicity into aquatic environment and human health. There are several processes available for wastewater treatment, depending on the nature and characteristic of the final effluent. But currently, they could not be applied in all cases by technical or economic reasons. The search for new technologies has been focused in the use of biological materials, thus arises the biosorption as alternative process, due different characteristic like low cost and good performance. In this work are present the results for biosorption process using the coconut shell powder as a biosorbent, for the removal different metal species. The removal capacity was evaluated in batch system, were studied the influence of pH, particle size and initial metal concentration. The results were evaluated with isotherms models of Langmuir and Freundlich. The adsorption capacity of heavy metals by the coconut shell was quite representative removals were observed in the order of 82% to 98% for an initial concentration of 20 ppm of metal species. Copyright © (2010) by Associação Brasileira de Metalurgia Materiais e Mineração (ABM).