A theoretical model and the associated numerical simulations for the mass transport from a moving Newtonian fluid to an assemblage of spherical solid absorbers are presented here. In particular, we present results from the numerical solution of the convection-diffusion equation in the simplified sphere-in-cell geometry and in stochastically constructed 3-D spherical particle assemblages for low to moderate Peclet numbers (Pe < 100) and relatively high porosities (epsilon > 0.7). A realistic adsorption/reaction/desorption mechanism is used to describe the adsorption of diluted mass on the particles surface as opposed to the assumption of instantaneous and Langmuir-type adsorption that has been adopted in previous works. We also attempt to compare the effect of considering different sorption mechanisms in terms of adsorption efficiency. In all cases, the adequacy of the simplified sphere-in-cell approach is tested against the predictions from the numerical study in sphere assemblages. It is found that higher adsorption efficiencies correspond to lower porosities while increasing Peclet numbers lead to lower lambda(0) values. Finally, it is shown that the assumption of instantaneous adsorption leads to severe overestimation of the adsorption efficiency in comparison with that obtained by using the more realistic adsorption-reaction-desorption model. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.