Hydrodynamic effects on the overall adsorption rate of phenol on activated carbon cloth through the advection-diffusion model application

•A new adsorption diffusional model (ADM) was proposed based on fundamental principles•ADM model considers the velocity and concentration gradients around the adsorbent•The model is able to predict the adsorption kinetics in non-homogeneous systems•Velocity gradients play the most important role during the phenol adsorption on ACC•Convective transport was more important than diffusive transport regardless of stirring speed