Preferential adsorption of ethanol from ethanol/water mixtures in batch equilibrium and kinetic experiments were carried out on a commercially available activated carbon adsorbent Filtrasorb 600 (F-600). A model based on finite difference method was developed and employed to determine the mass transfer parameters and equilibrium behaviour for the adsorption of ethanol from simple batch systems. The estimates of the adsorption isotherm along with the mass transfer parameters were used to simulate the transient performance that could be expected in a packed bed under various operating conditions (feed flow rate, feed concentration, and particle size). The applicability of the simulation results were found to be a good match with experimental packed bed experiments over the entire range of operating conditions tested.