Particle concentration significantly affected the gasification of petcoke particles according to our previous studies. In this work, gasification characteristics and morphological evolution of single petcoke particle were investigated using a high temperature stage microscope experimental setup. The results showed that the reaction temperature significantly affected the reactivity of petcoke in the temperature range of 1200-1300 degrees C. While the promoting effect on gasification reactivity decreased with further increasing the reaction temperature, the SEM analysis demonstrated the pore development during the gasification process, which attributed to the increase of reaction rate with conversion. The Raman analysis, HRTEM and SEM-EDX analysis showed that the heterogeneous graphitization of petcoke and non-uniform distribution of catalytic elements in petcoke attributed to the development of surface pores with limited depth. The gasification mechanism of petcoke particle can be briefly described as the reaction rate mainly contributed from the fast-reaction area. Besides, the pore development in fast-reaction area also enlarged the surface area of petcoke particle. (C) 2019 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.