Hydrogen is regarded as an ideal energy carrier because of many advantages. It is the cleanest fuel known until recently. Adsorptive storage of hydrogen on carbon based materials has been attracting attention by many researchers in recent years. Activated carbon is one of the widely used adsorbent in many fields because of its large surface area, pore volume and small pore size. In this study hydrogen sorption capacities of some carbon based materials at the temperature of liquid nitrogen were compared. Interaction of commercial type of activated carbons as well as activated carbons derived from coal by different methods with hydrogen were tested. Activated carbons were obtained by processing different coal samples from various coal mines in Zonguldak, a major center of coal production region situated on the Black Sea coast with a reserve of 1.3 billion tons of easily accessible coal. Physical and chemical methods using different operating conditions and chemical agents were applied on different coal samples. The highest surface area were obtained at the activation temperature of 800°C using KOH, NH₄Cl, ZnCl₂ from chars pyrolyzed at 600-900°C. The samples obtained were compared according to their hydrogen sorption capacities. Hydrogen sorption capacities of coal derived activated carbons were also compared with multiwalled carbon nanotubes-graphite mixture produced (MER) during the Kratschmer-Huffman arc process.