Hydrogen (H-2) produced from fossil sources via steam reforming of natural gas requires further purification before it can be safely used for human consumption and as fuel to generate electricity from hydrogen fuel cells. A promising technology for H-2 purification from carbon dioxide (CO2) is by pressure swing adsorption (PSA) using palm kernel shell activated carbon. The adsorbent exhibited higher affinity for CO2 than H-2. The adsorption system was capable of achieving H-2 purity of almost 100% with H-2 recovery of 88.43%. H-2 contributed 6.62 J.min(-1) of the energy requirement from the total energy of 6.63 J.min(-1) as a result of pressurization of the gas at 3 bar. H-2 contributed 5.85 J.min(-1) energy from depressurization of the gas to 1.5 bar. The modest energy requirement with high level of H-2 purity and recovery demonstrated the effectiveness of PSA with pressure equalization mode for H-2 purification from syngas.