The harvest of sugarcane in the 80 main producing countries is about 1.2 Gt with an amount of its residues potentially able to produce 300 TWh a(-1) of electric power. However, in spite of its potential, the use of bagasse as a source of energy is not so common. Bagasse, in fact, is considered a difficult fuel due to its fibrous nature, low bulk density and high moisture content, and the use of conventional stoker-fired combustors does not clearly show the economic feasibility of the process. Moreover, the high efficiency fluidized-bed technology cannot be directly applied to bagasse due to the difficulties associated with its fluidization. In this work, a two-stage gasification reactor is proposed for bagasse gasification. Bench scale gasification tests indicate that this reactor allows a complete gasification of biomass avoiding the formation of carbon and tar. Moreover, the use of a nickel catalyst makes the composition of outgoing syngas close to that predicted at the equilibrium conditions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.