Abstract: Heavy metal biosorption is an effective process for the removal and recovery of heavy metal ions.Equilibrium isotherms obtained experimentally are usually correlated empirically with commonly used adsorption models, without considering the underlying mechanisms of biosorption.Commonly used models for correlating biosorption isotherm data are briefly reviewed and the use of the adsorption models in correlating the desorption processes is analysed.A set of biosorption/desorption experiments for a marine alga derived biosorbent are carried out to test the use of the adsorption models in the desorption process.Experimental data indicate that the amount of the heavy metal ions desorbed from the biomass could not be calculated with the adsorption models.This suggests that the empirical use of adsorption models in the correlation may not be valid when the reversibility of the biosorption equlibrium in the desorption process needs to be considered.Therefore, mechanism based biosorption models are needed for better correlation of equilibrium isotherm data.