Rice husk is a base adsorbent for pollutant removal. It is a cost-effective material and a renewable resource. This study provides the physicochemical characterization of chemically and thermally treated rice husk adsorbents for phenol removal from aqueous solutions. We revealed new functional groups on rice husk adsorbents by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and observed major changes in the pore structure (from macro-mesopores to micro-mesopores) of the developed rice husk adsorbents using scanning electron microscopy. Additionally, we studied their surface area and pore size distribution, and found a greater enhancement of the morphological structure of the thermally treated rice husk compared with that chemically treated. Thermally treated adsorbents presented a higher surface area (24�201 m2.g-1) than those chemically treated (3.2 m2.g-1). The thermal and chemical modifications of rice husk resulted in phenol removal efficiencies of 36�64 and 28, respectively. Thus, we recommend using thermally treated rice husk as a promising adsorbent for phenol removal from aqueous solutions. © 2020 Daffalla et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.