Chlorinated hydrocarbons and aromatics constitute the major class of volatile organic compounds that contaminate groundwater. In this study, the equilibrium uptake and column dynamics for the adsorption of dichloromethane (as a typical chlorinated hydrocarbon) and toluene (as a representative of aromatic compounds) from aqueous phase on coal-based granular activated carbon (GAC) were investigated. The adsorption isotherms were measured in a temperature range of 20-40 degrees C. The experimental data obtained were correlated with several adsorption isotherm models. The Langmuir model was well adapted to describe the dichloromethane adsorption on GAC, while the adsorption of toluene on GAC was found to be well described by the Langmuir-BET hybrid model in the stated temperature range with R-squared value of about 0.99. The variations in adsorption breakthrough curves of toluene and dichloromethane with respect to operational parameters such as initial concentration, flow rate, column length, and temperature were investigated. The experimental breakthrough curves of both adsorbates are well fitted by Yan's model with high accuracy (R-squared value of 0.98-99) in most cases.