Abstract The gas mixing technique was used to study the kinetics of adsorption of a dye from its solution. Equilibrium and kinetic studies were investigated for the adsorption of Maxilon Red BL-3 onto a low cost adsorbent (natural clay). Linear regression was used to determine the best fit of equilibrium and kinetics expressions. The two parameters models including Freundlich, Temkin, Dubinin-Radushkevich and four different linearized forms of Langmuir were employed for fitting the equilibrium data. Type I of Langmuir model was found to be the best model that represents experimental data and the monolayer adsorption capacity was determined as 344.83 mg/g at 25ºC. Factors influencing dye adsorption such as gas flow rate, initial dye concentration and temperature were investigated. Four kinetic models, pseudo first-order, pseudo second-order, Elovich and fractional power kinetic models were selected to follow the adsorption process. A comparison of the kinetic models on the overall adsorption rate showed that the adsorption system using gas mixing was best described by pseudo second-order kinetics. Based on the sorption isotherm relations obtained a single stage batch adsorber was designed for different initial dye concentrations to calculate the optimum effluent volume based on dye concentration/adsorbent mass ratio.