The aim of this work was to study the feasibility and operation performance of plasma torch pyrolysis of biomass wastes, taking rice straw as the target material. This novel method has several advantages including high heating rate, short heating time, no viscous tar and low residual char (7.45-13.78 wt.%) or lava. The productions of CO and H(2) are the major components (91.85-94.14 vol.%) in the gas products with relatively high reaction rates. The maximum concentrations of gaseous products occurring times are all below 1 min. Almost 90% of gaseous products were appeared in 4 min reaction time. The yield of H(2) increases with the increase of input power or temperature. With the increase of moisture (5-55 wt.%), the mass yields of H(2) and CO(2) also increase from the H(2)O decomposition. However, due to the CO(2) production, the accumulated volume fraction of syngas decreases with the increase of moisture. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.