AbstractActivated carbon can be manufactured from waste coffee grounds via physical and/or chemical activation processes. However, challenges remain to quantify the differences in surface morphology between manufactured activated carbon granules and the waste coffee grounds. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to determine the quality of the physical and chemical activation processes performed in the presence of intensity inhomogeneity and identify surface characteristics of manufactured activated carbon granules and the waste coffee grounds. The spatial density was calculated by the Getis-Ord-Gi* statistic in scanning electron microscopy images. The spatial characteristics were determined by analyzing Ripley’s K function and complete spatial randomness. Results show that the method introduced in this paper is capable of distinguishing between manufactured activated carbon granules and the waste coffee grounds, in terms of surface morphology.