The rate of dye adsorption from aqueous effluents onto palm kernel shell (PKS) activated carbon has been studied experimentally using the batch adsorption method. The adsorption rates of methylene blue on PKS for systems of different initial dye concentrations are modeled using a film-pore-concentration dependent surface diffusion (FPCDSD) model. The FPCDSD model is sufficiently general and can be reduced easily to describe other simplified models. Using the FPCDSD model, only a single set of mass transfer parameters is required to describe the methylene blue/PKS system for different initial concentrations. A different set of mass transfer parameters are needed to obtain the best fitting if the pore diffusion is not included in the model. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.