Activated carbon was synthesized from Acacia leucophloea wood sawdust by a two stage chemical activation process. The first stage involved direct hydrolysis of the raw material to produce hydrochar. The second stage was the chemical activation of the hydrochar using ZnCl 2. In the present study, chemical activation, focusing on the effects of the impregnation ratio, carbonization temperature and carbonization time, has been investigated and the optimum production conditions were found to be as follows: 6:1 impregnation ratio, 600 °C carbonization temperature and 1 h carbonization time. The precursor and the activated carbon produced under the optimum conditions were characterized by several analytical techniques, such as elemental and proximate analyses, FE-SEM, FT-IR, TGA and BET surface area analysis. The adsorption performance of the activated carbon prepared towards anionic dye Direct Blue 2B was evaluated. The Langmuir model showed a better fit to the isotherm data, while kinetic data were fitted by the pseudosecond order model.