This work is aimed at understanding the basic principles of adsorption process in great details as adsorptive separation process has broad applications in the industry. To this end, a simple mathematical model has been used to describe transient fixed bed physical adsorption process. The effect of different parameters such as bed length, velocity, diffusivity, particle radius and isotherm properties on the nature of the breakthrough curve is investigated thoroughly . Analysis of these results led to the development of the generic breakthrough curve for a single component mono-layer adsorption. This will now enable us to predict the nature of breakthrough curve for different process parameters without recourse to the numerical simulation or experiment. Thus this study will be of great interest in the industrial separation process.