Abstract
This study points out the similarities between char from biomass gasification and activated carbon and reviews its successful applications in the field of adsorption. Surface area (SBET) is considered as the standard parameter. Since only few data on biomass gasification char are available in the literature, in this work char residues from different commercial gasification plants were collected and characterized, reporting their SBET values for comparison. The highest values for SBET are associated to dual-stage gasification technologies and are highly affected by the operating temperature.