Phenolic compounds are a widespread class of water pollutants that are known to cause serious human health problems; and the demand for effective adsorbents for the removal of toxic compounds is increasing. In this work adsorption of phenol, resorcinol and p-cresol on mesoporous carbon material (CMK-1) and modified with polyaniline polymer (CMK-1/PANI) has been investigated in attempt to explore the possibility of using nanoporous carbon as an efficient adsorbent for pollutants. It was found that CMK-1/PANI exhibits significant adsorption for phenolic derivatives. Batch adsorption studies were carried out to study the effect of various parameters like adsorbent dose, pH, initial concentration and contact time. From the sorption studies it was observed that the uptake of resorcinol was higher than other phenolic derivatives. Freundlich and Langmuir adsorption isotherms were used to model the equilibrium adsorption data for phenolic compounds. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.