Abstract In this study, a new comprehensive model is developed that can predict the effective thermal conductivity and thermal contact resistance of the packed bed adsorbers, as a function of water uptake, number of adsorbent layers, particle size, bed porosity, temperature, contact pressure, and gas pressure. The proposed model is successfully validated against experimental data for AQSOA FAM-Z02, measured by a heat flow meter. The relative differences of the experimental data and predicted values for the packed bed effective thermal conductivity are 2% and 3% at 25 and 80 °C, respectively. By increasing the water uptake from 0 to 0.3 kg kgads−1, effective thermal conductivity of a 2 mm FAM-Z02 randomly packed bed is predicted to increase by 17% for temperature of 25 °C and 18% for temperature of 80 °C.