The development of high performance and low-cost catalyst is very important to remove tar during biomass gasification. Solid waste coal gangue ash (CGA), which mainly contains SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3 and CaO, was selected as support for Ni-based catalyst. The prepared low-cost catalysts were characterized suitably by XRD, BET, TPR, SEM, TG and Raman techniques. Toluene was selected as typical biomass tar model compounds to test the catalyst performance and compared with traditional catalysts Ni/Al2O3 and Ni/SiO2. Ni/CGA-1d exhibited the highest catalytic performance with the toluene conversion and H-2 yield accounting for 91.5% and 58.2% respectively, at 800 degrees C. It was showed that the performance of Ni/CGA-1d was higher than traditional catalysts Ni/Al2O3 and Ni/SiO2, and comparable with other polymetallic reforming catalysts. Due to the good resistance of carbon deposition, the Ni/CGA-1d catalyst also per formed better catalytic activity stability. The ability should be attributing to the existence of some metal elements such as Fe, Mg, K, Ca et al. in coal gangue ash support. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.