In a Simulation of a developing fire, flame spread must be properly accounted for. The pyrolysis model is important in this respect. To that purpose, we develop a simplified enthalpy-based pyrolysis model that is extendable to multi-dimensional solid-phase treatments. This model is to be coupled to gas phase turbulent combustion simulations. The description of the pyrolysis process is simplified in order to acquire short simulation times. In this paper, first, the basic thermodynamic description of pyrolysis phenomena is revisited for charring and non-charring materials, possibly containing moisture. The heat of pyrolysis is defined and its relation to the formation enthalpies of individual constituents is explained. Solving only one equation for enthalpy on a fixed computational mesh, provides a useful description of the transport of heat and the pyrolysis process inside the solid material. Models for e.g. char oxidation or complex transport of the pyrolysis gases or water vapour inside the solid material can be Coupled to the present model. Next, numerical issues and implementation are discussed. We consider basic test cases with imposed external heat flux to a solid material that can be dry or contain moisture. We illustrate that continuous pyrolysis gases mass flow rates are obtained when a piecewise linear representation of the temperature field is adopted on the fixed computational mesh. With constant temperature per computational cell, discontinuities, with sudden drops to zero, are encountered, as reported in the literature. We show that the present model formulation is robust with respect to numerical aspects (cell size and time step) and that the model performs Well for variable external heat fluxes. For charring and non-charring materials, we validate the model results by means of numerical reference test cases and experimental data. By means of a numerical test case, we show that the model, when coupled to CFD calculations, is able to simulate flame spread. (c) 2009 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.