## 1 Introduction  
Water is a universal solvent used in almost every industrial process-hence, it is expected that wastewaters contain a lot of organic and inorganic pollutants. As a result of the extensive development of industrial activities in recent decades, large amounts of various pollutants have been released into waters. The chemical pollution of surface waters presents a threat to the aquatic environment with negative effects on ecosystems, as well as to human health. The presence of large concentrations of toxic pollutants in wastewater has become an important environmental problem, and very often small amounts of different organic compounds, including phenol and its derivatives, pesticides, aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, dyes, surfactants, etc., are detected in waters [1]. Brenolic compounds are prevalent in many industrial wastewaters from pharmaceutical, rubber, herbicide, pulp and paper industry, etc. [2, 3]. Along with phenol, nitro-phenols, amino-phenols and chloro-phenols are the most abundant phenolic compounds in industrial wastewaters [4, 5, 6]. Due to their toxicity, high mobility in the environment and low biodegradation, the US and European Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA and EEA) have included these compounds in their lists of priority pollutants to be monitored in industrial effluents. In this regard, adsorption technology has become a well-established and powerful technique for water treatment, as activated carbons are the most effectively used adsorbents, due to their suitable porous and chemical features [7]. Carbon adsorbents are considered to be effective, but their high cost has stimulated interest in examining the feasibility of using cheaper waste materials as potential adsorbents. In recent years, there is a special attention towards the production of low-cost acti-vated carbons from different waste materials [8]. In this connection, a number of works report the thermo-chemical conversion of different waste materials from biomass (agricultural by-products, different sources of plants, etc. ), coal by-products, and polymer wastes as alternative precursors for the preparation of carbon-based adsorbents [9; 10; 11]. Plastic by-products as a side materials from the production of different polymer materials are very promising raw materials for synthesis of activated carbons due to their availability at a low price [12; 13; 14]. Recently the thermo-chemical conversion of plastic by-products has become popular due to their availability and potential to produce energy as well as activated carbon with very good properties. Our earlier investigations [14; 15], which are focused on the synthesis of porous carbons, show that the chemical composition of the precursor strongly influences the structure and properties of the obtained adsorbent. For instance, the carbonizate--before activation--obtained from pyrolysis of a specific raw material containing dominantly aromatic compounds (such as biomass derived tar), is characterized by a dense structure and weak reactivity towards steam activation. In turn, when polymer material is used as a precursor, the final carbon material is less dense and more reactive, (due to the insertion of oxygen in the carbon skeleton), which favors pore formation during the activation process. There are various nanomaterials with huge potential to treat polluted water [1]. The aim of our research is to investigate the adsorptive performance of nanoporous synthetic carbon, obtained by high-temperature hydro-pyrolysis of a mixture of phenol-formaldehyde resin and polyolefine wax, towards p-nitrophenol, pentachlorophenol and m-aminophen in aqueous solutions. m-aminophen, p-nitrophenol and pentachlorophenol were chosen as representative phenols, due to the presence of electron-donating and withdrawing groups, respectively.