Volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from various sources such as chemical process industry, manufacturing industry, and automobiles have been an environmental and health concern. With the emerging emphasis on using green technologies to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, the use of microwave energy to achieve VOC emissions control with its electric power coming from nongreenhouse-related energy sources, such as wind, geothermal, solar, or even nuclear energy, becomes an attractive option. In this study, an experimental investigation involving the use of microwave energy to accomplish high temperature destruction of p-xylene in a packed bed reactor was performed using a SiC (silicon carbide) foam as the microwave absorbing media with air or nitrogen being the carrier gas. The experimental facilities consisted of a gas cylinder, a mass flow controller, a p-xylene vaporizer, a packed bed reactor packed with a SiC foam, a microwave applicator, and a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) for gas analysis. The SiC was found to be an excellent microwave absorber, which efficiently converts the microwave energy into heat energy. It was observed that the SiC temperature rises rapidly upon microwave irradiation and reaches a steady state temperature of higher than 800 degrees C within 2-3 min depending on the experimental conditions. A semiempirical energy balance model was formulated to describe the dynamic temperature profiles of the SiC in the reactor, and the model was found to simulate the observed profiles reasonably well. The destruction and removal efficiencies (DREs) for p-xylene were observed to reach 100% for all the experiments conducted with air being the carrier gas; however, the DREs never reached 100% with nitrogen being the carrier gas and the major destruction byproducts were observed to be benzene, toluene, styrene, biphenyl, and the unreacted p-xylene. The study has demonstrated that the microwave technology can be effectively developed to control the emissions of low concentrations of VOCs, especially in air.