The aim of this paper is to study the performance of several carbon materials on PAH abatement. For this purpose, hot gas cleaning from an atmospheric fluidized bed combustor pilot plant was analyzed by using five different porous materials. Combustion experiments were carried out at similar conditions to those in power stations: 850 degreesC, 2% oxygen excess, 0.260 m/s gas speed, and low rank coal as fuel. An aliquot of the combustion gases was flowed through a sampling system consisting of a Teflon filter and two adsorbents: the first was a blend of 0.1 mg of active carbon and 8.0 g of sand and the second was 1.0 g XAD-2 resin used as test adsorbent. The temperature and the space velocity of the adsorption bed were 150 degreesC and 5 x 10(4) h(-1), respectively. Since there was a considerable decrease in the PAH emission concentration under ppbv levels, it was concluded that active carbons might be a promising technological solution for hazardous emission control. The active carbons that were found more appropriate for this abatement were those with a high porosity development and mean pore size around 1.4 nm, which is approximately twice the PAH molecular size.