The paper presents the results of the research on the combustion process of syngas fuels containing high hydrocarbons and nitrogen compounds in the Zonal Volumetric Combustion (ZVC) technology. During the experiments the effectiveness of ZVC for syngas fuels with benzene and pyridine (as representatives of tar components and fuel bound nitrogen) as well as ammonia was studied. It has been shown that the impact of high hydrocarbons and a type of nitrogen bound compounds in the fuel on the overall emission of NOX, CO and CXHY in the ZVC technology is negligible for syngas with a low concentration of Ni species. It becomes noticeable for high Ni content fuels especially in the case of NOX emission. In the ZVC technology, the amount of air in the reduction zone has a dominant impact on NOX emission. The highest emission of NOX was observed for fuels with pyridine and benzene for the case where in the reducing zone oxygen was at the highest examined level. The lowest value of the conversion factor of Ni species into NOX was received for high calorific syngas. Even for a high content of CXHY in the fuel, soot and CO were not observed in flue gases. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.