Nowadays fossil fuel plays a significant role in the global energy supply and demand. Many non-oil producers and
agricultural countries have set the target of biomass utilization as alternative energy in their energy policy plan.
Gasification is one of the promising technologies in terms of the conversion of biomass to heat and power. However,
this technology has faced many challenges, e.g. high capital cost, low energy conversion efficiency, etc. As the Thai
government has promoted the use of biomass as alternative energy and has financially supported the use of
agricultural residue for heat and power production in 12 pilot projects, this study will review the current status of the
gasification technology used in the projects and discuss the results of a performance test conducted in terms of
feedstock consumption rate, producer gas yield, heating value of producer gas, and thermal efficiency. The feedstock
used consisted of residue from wood, corncob, palm, etc. Four projects used producer gas for electrical power
generation with the capacity ranged from 250 to 300 kW
e
and 8 projects to produce heat for use in the ceramics
industry, for fertilizer drying, hotels, etc. According to the study, it was seen that downdraft air gasification
technology is suitable for small-scale heat and power production. The heating value of the producer gas ranged from
1.89 t
o 5.89 MJ/Nm
3
and the maximum cold gas efficiency of 76.96% was able to be reached.