Recent development in the advanced intermediate temperature (400 to 700degreesC) ceramic fuel cell (CFC) research brings up feasibility and new opportunity to develop innovative biomass-fuelled CFC technology. This work focuses on fundamentals of the biomass-fuelled CFCs based on available biofuel resources through thermochemical conversion technologies. Both real producer gas from biomass gasification and imitative compounded gas were used as the fuel to operate the CFCs in the biomass CFC testing station. The composition of the fuel gas was varied in a wide range of practices of the present conversion technology both in KTH and Shandong Institute of Technology (SDIT), CFC performances were achieved between 100 and 700 mW cm(-2) at 600-800degreesC corresponding to various gas compositions. A high performance close to 400 mW cm(-2) was obtained at 600degreesC for the gas with the composition of H-2 (50 per cent) + CO (15 per cent) + CO2 (15 per cent) + N-2 (20 per cent) and more than 600 mW cm(-2) for the H-2 (55 per cent) + CO (28 per cent) + CO2 (17 per cent) at 700degreesC. This paper presents the experimental results and discusses the fundamentals and future potentiality on the biomass fuelled CFCs. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.