Abstract: With polyvinyl acetate (PVAC) as a binder, alcohol as an adjuvant and deionized water as a solvent, a systematic study was made on the formation process of two kinds of powdered activated carbons (PACs) with different specific surface areas and their properties were also discussed in detail, such as specific surface area, radical strength and water resistance. It was systematically investigated that the effects of the amount of PVAC, alcohol and deionized water, curing temperature, and curing time on the radical strength, specific surface area and water resistance of the shaped activated carbons, by which the optimum operation condition was found out. Combined with fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), the curing mechanism on preparation of the shaped activated carbons was primarily revealed. The results obtained showed that, under such operation conditions as the amount of PVAC of 0.45 g/g (a mass ratio of PVAC to AC), the amount of alcohol of 5 g/g (a mass ratio of alcohol to PVAC), the amount of deionized water of 3 g/g (a mass ratio of deionized water to PVAC), curing temperature of 100 ℃ and curing time of 60 min, the shaped activated carbons, of which the radical strength, specific surface area, iodine number and benzene value were 89.4 N/cm, 2 168 m²/g, 982 mg/g and 404 mg/g, respectively, were made from PACs with specific surface area of about 2 634 m²/g. The experiments with and without alcohol indicated that the addition of alcohol could improve the water resistance of shaped activated carbons. After shaped activated carbons had been soaked in the boiling water for 10h, there were not any breakages.