Lignocellulosic material oat hull previously demonstrated its capability for concentrating butanol from butanol-water vapor mixtures by adsorption process. To better understand the fundamentals of water and butanol adsorption, this work further investigated the adsorption dynamics of pure butanol and water. The research was first done experimentally using the oat hull based biosorbent in a packed column system, and then the Klinkenberg model was employed to simulate the adsorption breakthrough curves obtained in water or butanol single component system. The Klinkenberg model simulated the experimental data satisfactorily. Moreover, the internal and external mass transfer resistances were estimated from the modeling results for pure water and butanol adsorption. The results demonstrated that internal mass transfer controls the adsorption kinetics. Compared to butanol, water has more favorable adsorption performance on the oat hull biosorbent. Effective separation of water from butanol using the oat hull based biosorbent is based on kinetic control. Furthermore, this study reveals that the oat hull material was stable and had been used for over 20 adsorption-desorption cycles without deteriorated quality for water adsorption.