Pressurized high temperature black liquor gasification has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of energy and chemical recovery in the pulping industry and to enable new processes, e.g. production of renewable automotive fuels from the formed synthesis gas. However, the current process is still considered as novel and the interest in validated computer models for scale-up and process optimisation is large. In this paper a sensitivity analysis on the four most important model parameters in the pre-processing 'droplet composition model' for a proposed CFD model has been performed. It was shown that careful measurements of the amount of sulphur released to the gas phase as H2S during devolatilization and the concentration ratio of Na2S and Na2SO4 in the black liquor char under real process conditions are of great importance for calibration of the model. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.