Abstract: A simple,feasible route for utilizing agricultural waste corn cob to prepare activated carbon of high specific surface area has been studied,using KOH as activating agent.The results show that the formation of micro-pore with high specific surface area can be influenced by many factors such as carbonization temperature,heating rate,activating time and the proportion of mKOH/mC,the optimal conditions of which are 850℃ for activating temperature,450-600℃ for carbonization temperature,1.2 h for activating time,3:1-5:1 for mKOH/mC when the heating rate is 30℃/min.In addition,the activating way can also obviously affect the specific surface area of the activated carbon.The structure of activated carbon prepared has narrow pore size distribution and nearly no hysteresis phenomenon is observed.