The adsorption isotherm data of R- and S-1-indanol and of their racemic mixture on cellulose tribenzoate were measured by frontal analysis. These data were then fitted to the Langmuir, the Bilangmuir, the Toth, and the Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm models. The single component data fitted well to both the Bilangmuir and the Toth models. Combined with the lumped pore diffusion model (POR) of chromatography, these isotherms were used to calculate overloaded elution profiles of the pure enantiomers. The calculated and the experimental profiles agree excellently in all cases if the former are derived from the Bilangmuir model. The competitive experimental data also gave excellent agreement with the Bilangmuir model. The simultaneous fit of all the data, for the single components and the racemic mixture, gave again superior agreement with the bilangmuir model. The overloaded elution profiles of samples of the racemic mixture calculated with the Bilangmuir isotherm model combined with the POR model of chromatography gave results in very good agreement with the experimental band profiles of large samples of the racemic mixture. This confirms that in numerous cases the whole set of competitive isotherms of two enantiomers can be derived from the experimental data obtained only with the racemic mixture. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.