The kinetics of carbon oxidation at low temperature (<300 °C) was explored by isothermal thermogravimetry in order to predict the optimal conditions (temperature, oxygen content) to obtain the maximal amount of oxygen on carbon surface. The suggested kinetic equation is based on the assumption of three reactions - creation of the oxygen surface groups, decomposition of created oxygen surface groups and carbon burn off. Truncated Sestak-Berggren kinetic model was used for the mechanism description.The optimised kinetic equation has shown the good agreement between the theoretical and experimental data and enabled calculation of conditions for effective carbon surface oxidation (maximal oxygen chemisorption). Predicted oxygen uptake at given conditions (4.0% at 226 °C in 20% O2, 4.6% at 196 °C in 50% O2 and 4.5% at 205 °C in 80% O2) was confirmed experimentally with very good agreement (e.g. Figure 1 (a) for 50%O2 atmosphere).When the dependence of oxygen pressure was incorporated into the kinetic equation, the model becomes less reliable and its prediction strength decrease. The discrepancies (Figure 1 (b)) were probably caused by the impropriate description of the pressure dependence (model p_O2^p). Development of better models for description of the effect of gaseous reactants in heterogeneous thermal reactions serves a challenge for future work.