As is universally acknowledged, the fast advances in industrialization and urbanization have caused the rapid increase in the emission of aromatic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which results in not only much environmental pollution and human health hazard, but also a significant waste of resources. Under such circumstances, it is urgent that some scientific strategies should be adopted to eliminate or reuse those VOCs. Two important strategies for VOC emission control are adsorption and dynamic desorption on porous carbon adsorbents (PCAs), which help to capture valuable VOCs or remove unvalued VOCs. In this review, the research developments of selective adsorption of gaseous aromatic VOCs onto different porous PCAs were systematically reviewed, especially the interaction mechanism between adsorbates and adsorbents during the adsorption process. Besides, the critical influential factors for the desorption of aromatic VOCs onto PCAs are also discussed, and the mechanisms focused on deactivation and regeneration of PCAs associated with the interaction mechanism of adsorbents and adsorbates are presented. Finally, the integrated processes based on adsorption and desorption for emission control and resource recovery are carefully summarized. Overall, this review expounds the characteristics of adsorption and desorption of aromatic VOCs on various PCAs as well as the integrated technologies for emission control and resource recovery of industrial VOC exhaust. We hope that this work can lay the foundation for the efficient abatement and recovery technologies of VOCs from industrial exhaust.