The paper discusses the influence of adsorption/desorption phenomena on the purification performance of the reverse-flow catalytic incinerator for abatement of volatile organic compounds (VOC). It is shown that the reversible adsorption of VOC at the catalyst surface may occur at the catalyst bed inlet in the end of the cycle, followed by desorption into outlet gases after flow reversal leading to decrease of the process purification efficiency. The mathematical modelling results showed that inert material beds in combination with proposed process control strategy are needed to avoid negative influence of adsorption effects.