Petroleum coke is one of the compounds that used in recent years as a raw material in production of activated carbon. Since with development of refining processes in Iran, petroleum coke production increase significantly, in this research production of activated carbon from petroleum coke has been studied. Considering the advantages of chemical activation than physical activation in production of activated carbon from petroleum coke, in this study chemical activation method has been used. Potassium hydroxide was used as chemical agent in impregnation stage. Also nitrogen gas was used in order to create neutral atmosphere during the activation. To determine the best conditions to produce activated carbon, three effective parameters the activation temperature, impregnation ratio and activation time, were considered. The survey conducted by the design of experiments using a standard response surface method, named the central composite design. Based on ANOVA for the effect of parameters, increasing impregnation ratio has the greatest effect on improving the quality of producing activated carbon. Activation temperature and activation time considered to be as lower levels effective on activated carbon quality. In addition to specific surface area, the production efficiency as the most important economical parameter in the activated carbon production, was considered for the optimization procedure. The optimal values of activation temperature, activation time and impregnation ratio were obtained; 789?C, 0.5 hours and 4.74, respectively. In these conditions the values measured for the amount of activated carbon surface area was 2037 m 2 /g and production efficiency was 51.34%. Good agreement was obtained comparing these results with those obtained by model prediction. Key Words Activated Carbon, Petroleum Coke, Chemical Activation, BET Surface Area, Iodine Number and Design of Experiments.