The distribution of fuel-nitrogen in gases, tar and char from gasification of biomass in a pressurised fluidised bed gasifier was investigated. Four species of biomass: birch, Salix, Miscanthus and Reed canary grass were gasified at 0.4 MPa and 900 degrees C. Oxygen-enriched nitrogen was used as fluidising agent. As a reference, gasification of Daw Mill coal was also carried out under the same experimental conditions. The experimental results illustrate that both the nature of the original fuels and the chemical structure of the nitrogen in the fuel have influence on the distribution of fuel-nitrogen in gases (NH3, HCN, NO), tar and char under the employed experimental conditions. The present work also shows that the types of nitrogen heterocyclic compounds (NHCs) in the tar from different kinds of biomass are the same and the major compound is pyridine. However, the distribution of the various NHCs in the tar from the four species of biomass varies: the higher the content of fuel-nitrogen, the higher the concentration of two-ring NHCs in the tar. An effective method for extracting NHCs from the acidic absorption of the product gas was introduced in the present work. The method makes use of solid phase extraction (SPE) by a silica-based C-18 tube to extract the NHCs which subsequently were analysed by gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionisation detection (FID). The recovery and reproducibility of the SPE technique for NHCs is discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.