In the present study, the activated carbon is produced using phosphoric acid treatment of the waste bamboo scaffolding and activated at either 400 or 600 degrees C. The effect of acid to bamboo ratio (Xp) up to 2.4 has been studied. The BET surface area increased with increasing Xp and activating temperature. BET surface area up to 2500 m(2)/g carbon has been produced. In order to simulate effluent treatment from textile industry, the produced carbon was tested for its dye adsorption capacities. Two acid dyes with different molecular sizes were used, namely Acid Yellow 117 (AY117) and Acid Blue 25 (AB25). In a single component system, it was found that dye with smaller molecular size, AB25, was readily adsorbed onto the carbon while the larger size dye, AY117, showed little adsorption. As a result. it is possible to tailor-make the carbon for the adsorption of dye mixtures in industrial applications, especially textile dyeing, i.e. molecular sieve effect. A binary AY117-AB25 mixture was used to test the possibility of the molecular sieve effect. Furthermore, experimental results were fitted to equilibrium isotherm models, Langmuir, Freundlich and Sips for the single component system. For the binary component system, extended single-component equilibrium isotherm models were used to predict the experimental data. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.