Activated carbon also called activated charcoal or activated coal is a form of carbon that has been processed to make it extremely porous and thus to have a very large surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions. In this research studies environmental impacts of activated carbon production processes which produced from two types of agricultural by-products namely : coconut shells and palm-oil shells . SimaPro software is applied to evaluate the environmental impacts of both processes. The results have shown that the environmental impacts for the process using coconut shells as raw material is higher than that using palm –oil shells as raw material.

This research aims to study the effect of drying temperature on the changes in the moisture content of charcoal briquettes undergoing drying of solar energy and far-infrared radiation (Solar+FIR) and far-infrared radiation (FIR). The electricity consumption and the specific energy consumption were also investigated. The coconut shell charcoal briquettes with the initial moisture content of about 41-43% MW were dried at 55 60 and 65oC until the final moisture content of 8% MW was obtained. Based on the experimental results it was found that the drying temperatures and the drying methods had effects on the changes in the moisture content of charcoal briquettes. Drying at high temperature could reduce the moisture content of charcoal briquettes faster than that at low temperature. Drying using FIR could reduce the moisture content of charcoal briquettes faster than that using Solar+FIR. Moreover the electricity consumption and the specific energy consumption decreased with an increase in the drying temperature. Drying using Solar+FIR had lower electricity consumption but had higher specific energy consumption than drying using FIR. In this study the charcoal briquettes had the average heating value of about 6667.05 cal/g.