We have demonstrated a facile and economical method for the synthesis of the sewage sludge-derived carbon. This product was prepared by using poly-aluminium chloride (PAC) as pore-forming agent through high-temperature pyrolysis at 900℃, and employed for the removal of phenol from water. Thermodynamic properties, textural evolution, morphological structure, and surface functional groups of product are characterized. Moreover, the total pore volumes and SSA of the residual carbon increased to 0.1727 cm 3 /g and 141.2 m 2 /g, that expanded to 2.3 times and 2.5 times compared with direct carbonized sample (0.075 cm 3 /g and 55.45 m 2 /g), respectively. The results indicated that the addition of PAC had important effect on the texture, surface properties and adsorption performance. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms studies were investigated in details to reveal that the kinetics and equilibrium adsorptions are well-described by pseudo-second-order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. Remarkably, the resulting adsorbent showed comparably adsorption capacity with the commercial activated carbons. Meanwhile, our method is more economical than other chemical activation methods.