The study area was the coal mine Sabzak area - the city of Karokh - province of Herat - Afghanistan is in the geographic area ?? = 34 36 00 ?? = 63 09 30. The coal has been reported to be a bitumen type. ince coal reserves in Afghanistan are significant and no processing has been done on it, it was decided to study the possibility of production of activated carbon from mentioned coals for adsorption of pigment. Different chemical and physical activation methods were applied on the coal samples and the produces activated carbon were characterized. The nitrogen sorption results showed that the highest porosity (800 m 2 /g) was achieved when the KOH was used for activation and the lowest porosity (50 m 2 /g ) was achieved when just physical activation was applied. Then the adsorption of methylene blue onto activated carbon samples were analyzed. Highest amount of adsorption of methylene blue was detected for samples with highest porosity. The results indicated that the porosity was not the only factor affecting the amount of methylene blue adsorbed but the surface charge could affect it as well.
