This paper is devoted to the study of a posteriori error estimates for the scalar nonlinear convection-diffusion-reaction equation $c_t + \nabla \cdot ( {\bf u}f(c)) - \nabla \cdot (D \nabla c) + \lambda c = 0$ .The estimates for the error between the exact solution and an upwind finite volume approximation to the solution are derived in the L 1-norm,independent of the diffusion parameter D. The resulting a posteriori error estimate is used to define an grid adaptive solution algorithm for the finite volume scheme. Finally numerical experiments underline the applicability of the theoretical results.