In this work it is studied the combustion of batches of wood char particles in a shallow fluidized bed at laboratory scale. Commercial and recarbonized chars from nut pine and cork oak parent woods were burned for bed temperatures of 600-750 degrees C and particle sizes range of 1.8-3.6 mm. A combustion model based on the two-phase theory of fluidization is presented to evaluate the global combustion resistance. Sherwood numbers and kinetic constants for the heterogeneous phase reaction are also assessed. Through the comparison among theoretical and experimental results, conclusions are drawn on the combustion mechanism as well as on the combustion controlling resistance. The Arrhenius law is proposed to predict the kinetic constants for the studied chars. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.