Coconut shells have been used as a precursor for the preparation of activated carbon by the chemical activation method. The full factorial design was applied to determine the optimum conditions for preparing the activated carbon. The factors studied were the carbonization temperature, the carbonization time and the concentration of the activating agent. Phosphoric acid was the activating agent, used for chemical activation. Planning of the experiments using the three-level full factorial design method resulted in eight trials with the iodine number as the answer to each trial. The various results obtained were analyzed using Nemrow software in order to highlight the influence of factors and their interaction. The results reveal that carbonization temperature, the carbonization time and the concentration exert a significant influence on the iodine number, when they are at their high level, respectively 600 ° C, 4h, 30% for the value of the iodine index of 445.44mg/g.