The main objective of this study was to evaluate the adsorptionefficiency of two adsorbent materials, Iraqi chicken eggshells (ESh)and activated carbon (AC) derived from ESh powder for theremoval of a cationic dye (Janus green B; JGD) from aqueoussolution. Activated carbon was synthesised from ESh usinga simple chemical activation method using phosphoric acid asthe activating agent. The physicochemical properties of the adsor-bents were characterised by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET)method, FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy(SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), inductivelycoupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), andpoint of zero charge (pHpzc). The results of BET analysis confirmedthat AC has a higher specific surface area (4.146 m2/g) comparedto ESh (1.561 m2/g). The effects of operational parameters includ-ing contact time (5–60 min for ESh and 5–30 min for AC), adsor-bent dose (0.05–1 g/10 mL), temperature (298–318 K), and pH(3.72–11.36) were systematically investigated. Optimal adsorptionoccurred at pH 11.36, where JGD removal efficiencies reached90.13% with 0.2 g/10 mL of ESh after 60 min and 92.89% with0.1 g/10 mL of AC after 30 min at 298 K. Equilibrium data werebest fitted by the Freundlich isotherm model, yielding adsorptioncapacities of 0.09 mg/g for ESh and 1.85 mg/g for AC at 318 K andpH 5.5. The high correlation coefficient (R2 = 0.99) confirmedfavourable heterogeneous adsorption. Kinetic data followed thepseudo-second-order model (R2 = 0.99). Thermodynamic para-meters (ΔG°, ΔH°, ΔS°) indicated that JGD adsorption onto EShwas spontaneous (ΔG°<0), exothermic (ΔH°<0), and associatedwith decreased randomness (ΔS°<0), while adsorption onto ACwas spontaneous (ΔG°<0), endothermic (ΔH°>0), and accompa-nied by increased randomness (ΔS°>0). The adsorption mechan-ism was attributed to electrostatic interactions, hydrogenbonding, and π–π interactions. Desorption experiments demon-strated that 0.2 mol/L HNO₃ effectively regenerated both adsor-bents. After seven adsorption–desorption cycles, AC exhibitedsuperior stability and reusability compared to ESh
