The paper will review commercially available bamboo based activated carbon and benefits of using bamboo as one of eco-friendly materials for manufacturing activated carbon. Key factors that affect activated carbon characters and performance such as manufacturing process (chemical and steam activation) and raw material (pore size and surface functional groups) will be discussed.

Normal activated carbon specifications such as iodine value, total pore volume, pore size distribution, density, etc. are used to evaluate and compare the bamboo based with other materials (coal or coconut) based activated carbon. Paper will focus on advantage of bamboo based activated carbon characters such as (1) biomass sustainable material, (2) utilization of agriculture waste, (3) low carbon foot print, (4) large pore volume, and (5) well-developed micropore. Finally, potential and examples of bamboo based activated carbon applications in VOCs control, catalyst substrate, odor control, etc. will be discussed.