Preparing activated carbon fromcocoa by physical activation using carbon dioxide as an activator gas wasreported (Ahmad et al.
, 2012, and Ahmad et al., 2013). Ahmad et al., suggest activated carbonfrom cocoa with moderate BET surface area (85.09 m2/g) and averagepore size (2.7 nm) with adsorption capacity of methylene blue dye of 212.77mg/g can be achieved by carbonized the cocoa shell at 800 ?C and further activation process at 850 ?C using fixed bed reactor (Ahmad et al.
, 2012). In their other work, the cocoa shellactivated carbon produced by same procedure produce an increased in BET surfacearea when treated with Hydrochloric acid after the activation process (Ahmad etal., 2013). Cocoa activated carbon also can beproduced by chemically activated using hydrochloric acid (HCl), zinc chloride(ZnCl2), potassium carbonate (K2CO3),potassium hydroxide (KOH) and phosphoric acid (H3PO4)(Ribas et al., 2014, Saucier et al., 2015, Cruz et al.
,2012, Khairuladli et al., 2017 and Pereira et al., 2014). Ribas et al.
, successfully achieved acocoa activated carbon by mixing powdered cocoa shell with inorganic components(28.6 % red mud, 28.6 % lime, 14.
3 % KOH, 14.3 % Al(NO3)3and 14.2 % Na2SO4) in 1:1 ratio and were chemicalactivated by HCl.
The produced cocoaactivated carbons have better capability of adsorb the reactive violet 5 (RV-5)textile dye from aqueous solutions as compared to the commercial cocoaactivated carbon in terms of equilibrium time and maximum amount of RV-5 can beremoved (Ribas et al., 2014). Saucier et al., described a process of producing cocoa activatedcarbon by mixing the powdered cocoa shell with inorganic components (20 % lime+ 40 % FeCl3 + 40 % ZnCl2) with various inorganic:organicratio. Then, HCl was used to chemicallyactivated cocoa-shell carbons which induced by microwave. The results showedcocoa activated carbon with inorganic:organic ratio of 1:1 has the highestadsorption capacity for the removal of sodium diclofenac (DCF) and nimesulide(NM) from aqueous solutions (Saucier et al., 2015).
Khairuladli et al., produced cocoaactivated carbon by using K2CO3 as an activating agentand has capability to adsorp methylene blue with maximum adsorption capacity of64.98 mg/g. Cruz et al.
, producedactivated carbon from cocoa pod husk by using three different chemicalactivating agents (K2CO3, KOH, and ZnCl2) andfound that activated carbon produced using ZnCl2 has the highest BETsurface area and pore volume and capable to remove arsenic up to 80 % in lessthan 1 hour (Cruz et al., 2012). Whereas other investigations showed different results where H3PO4is a better chemical ativating agent compared to ZnCl2 as itproduced higher surface area, pore volume and pore diameter (Pereira et al.,2014).
