Upgrading producer gas quality from rubber wood gasification in a radio frequency tar thermocatalytic treatment reactor

•The use of radio frequency energy to produce high quality producer gas was studied.•Gas heating value improved as the thermocatalytic temperature increases.•The cleanest producer gas was obtained with dolomite.•Feasible producer gas for internal engine application was obtained. This study focused on improving the producer gas quality using radio frequency (RF) tar thermocatalytic treatment reactor. The producer gas containing tar, particles and water was directly passed at a particular flow rate into the RF reactor at various temperatures for catalytic and thermal treatments. Thermal treatment generates higher heating value of 5.76MJNm−3 at 1200°C. Catalytic treatments using both dolomite and Y-zeolite provide high tar and particles conversion efficiencies of about 97% on average. The result also showed that light poly-aromatic hydrocarbons especially naphthalene and aromatic compounds particularly benzene and toluene were still found even at higher reaction temperatures. Low energy intensive RF tar thermocatalytic treatment was found to be effective for upgrading the producer gas quality to meet the end user requirements and increasing its energy content.