In this paper a post-crosslinked polymeric adsorbent PDHT-2 with high specific surface area was prepared by Friedel-Crafts reaction of the pendant vinyl groups without an externally added crosslinking agent. It was obvious that both the specific surface area and the pore volume of starting copolymer PDHT-1 increased significantly after post-crosslinking. Batch adsorption runs of phenol from aqueous solution onto adsorbent PDHT-1 and PDHT-2 were researched, and commercial macroporous resin XAD-4 was chosen for comparison purpose. Experimental results showed that the adsorption isotherms could be fitted by Langmuir model and Freundlich model and the adsorption capacity onto PDHT-2 was much larger than that onto PDHT-1 and XAD-4 with respect to phenol and phenolic compound, which possibly resulted from its larger specific surface area. The adsorption process for phenol onto the three adsorbents was proved to be exothermic and spontaneous in nature. The thermodynamic parameters such as Gibbs free energy (Delta G), change in enthalpy (Delta H) and change in entropy (Delta S) had been calculated. The adsorption kinetic curves obeyed the pseudo-second order model and the intraparticle diffusion process was the rate-controlling step. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.