Hydrogen production by biomass gasification in supercritical water is a promising technology for utilizing high moisture content biomass, but reactor plugging is a critical problem when feedstocks with high biomass content are gasified. The objective of this paper is to prevent the plugging problem by studying the effects of the various parameters on biomass gasification in supercritical water. These parameters include pressure, temperature, residence time, reactor geometrical configuration, reactor types, heating rate, reactor wall properties, biomass types, biomass particle size, catalysts and solution concentration. Biomass model compounds (glucose, cellulose) and real biomass are used in this work. All the biomasses have been successfully gasified and the product gas is composed of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and a small amount of ethane and ethylene. The results show that the gas yield of biomass gasification in supercritical water is sensitive to some of the parameters and the ways of reducing reactor plugging are obtained. (c) 2005 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.