An adsorption microcalorimeter was designed and built in our laboratory and used for the determination of differential adsorption heats in different samples of porous solids: activated carbon granules, activated carbon pellets, an activated carbon monolith and a zeolite sample. This work shows the relationship between adsorption heat and the pore size of different porous solids using adsorption of NH 3 , CO and N 2 O. The result shows that the thermal effect can be related with textural properties and superficial chemical groups of the studied porous solids. The values of differential heats of N 2 O adsorption in the investigated systems have shown that this interaction is weaker than that with CO. Small amounts of N 2 O are chemisorbed in the investigated systems. For the room temperature adsorption of N 2 O, the strongest active sites for the interaction with Brönsted acid groups in the ACM structure were identified. The values determined are between −60 kJ/mol and −110 kJ/mol for ZMOR and ACM, respectively, for the adsorption of N 2 O and −95 kJ/mol and −130 kJ/mol for the adsorption of CO.