**4. Conclusion**

Air gasification of agricultural wastes was successfully performed in a lab scale fluidized bed gasifier, producing producer gas mainly hydrogen which could replaced fossil fuel in the near future. Among the gasification parameters tested, the gasification temperature and equivalence ratio appeared to have the most pronounced effect on the hydrogen performance. Hydrogen production is favoured by an increasing temperature and hydrogen yield is enhanced as the water gas shift reaction goes to the completion with reducing of CO and CO2 in the product gas. The influence of equivalence ratio on the performance of a gasifier could be regarded as the effect of reactor temperature as the reactor was found to be ER dependent. As a higher equivalence (ER) had complex effects on tests results and there existed an optimal value for this factor, which was different according to different operating parameters. The feeding rate and biomass particle size would only show minor effect during the gasification process. In view of laboratory scale, the optimum conditions for hydrogen production in air gasification for studied biomass feedstock can be summarised as the following; a) temperature of gasification zone (950-1000°C); b) Equivalence ratio 0.23 and c) feeding rate at 0.70 kg/hr and d) Particle size (1-3 mm). The obtained results deduced to the conclusion that agricultural wastes are potential candidate for hydrogen production as an alternative renewable energy source and partially reduced the landfill problems of agricultural residues.
