A parametric study of alkali-promoted hydrogen gas production from by-products from food-based biomass, such as glucose, molasses and rice bran, under hydrothermal conditions has been carried out. Partial oxidation of the biomass samples was aided by the addition of hydrogen peroxide and experiments were carried out in the presence of sodium hydroxide. The effects of reaction temperature, reaction time and feed concentration on the conversion of glucose, molasses and rice bran to gaseous products under hydrothermal conditions were investigated. The reaction time and reaction temperature were investigated in the range of 0-120 min and 330-390 degrees C, respectively. The results confirmed the positive influence of NaOH in the production of hydrogen gas via the water gas shift reaction. In the presence of the alkali, no tar/oil and char were observed. The hydrogen gas yield increased when the reaction temperature and reaction time increased. It was observed that higher reaction temperature led to an increase in the amount of methane gas produced. With increasing feed concentration, the yields of other gases such as CO, CO(2), CH(4) and C(2)-C(4) increased, while hydrogen gas production decreased for all the biomass samples. The generation of gaseous products from the molasses and rice bran showed a similar trend to that of glucose, under identical test conditions. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.