Recently, antibiotics pollution has attracted more interests from many researches which causes potential risks on the ecosystem and human health. Herein, the porous carbons (PCs) was prepared by directly simultaneous carbonization/self-activation of potassium citrate at 750-900 degrees C for chloramphenicol (CAP) removal from aqueous solution. The batch experiments were studied, which indicated that PCs prepared at 850 degrees C, namely PCPCs-850, possessed excellent adsorption ability for CAP with a maximum adsorption amount of 506.1 mg g(-1). Additionally, PCPCs-850 showed a large BET surface area of 2337.06 m(2) g(-1) and microporosity of 89.11% by N-2 adsorption-desorption experiment. The Langmuir and pseudo-second-order model could more precisely describe the experimental data. And thermodynamic analysis illustrated that CAP adsorption onto PCPCs-850 was an endothermic and spontaneous process. Importantly, the adsorbent exhibited good stability and regeneration after four times cycles. Based on these excellent performance, it is potential that PCPCs-850 can be used as a promising adsorbent for treating contaminants in wastewater. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.