A novel air cyclone gasifier of rice husk has been used to obtain experimental data for air staged gasification. Three positions and five ratios of secondary air were selected to study effect of the secondary air on the temperature profile in the gasifier and quality of syngas. Temperature profile and the syngas component are found to be strongly influenced by the injection position and ratio of the secondary air. Generally, gas temperature in all conditions increased at the early stage of reaction, and then decreased in the reduction zone where reactions were endothermic. The peak temperature in the gasifier changed with the injection positions and ratios of the secondary air, which could be as high as 1056 degrees C. The concentration Of CO2, CO, H-2 and CH4 increased with the secondary air while the O-2 concentration remained constant. The syngas component exhibited different laws when the secondary air ratio was changed. It was also shown that the optimum condition was that the secondary air was injected in the oxidization zone at a secondary air ratio of about 31%. Under that condition, the fuel gas production was 1.30 Nm(3)/kg, the low heating value of the syngas was 6.7 MJ/Nm(3), the carbon conversion rate was 92.2% and the cold gas efficiency of the gasifier was 63.2%. The tar content of the syngas was also studied in this paper. It decreased from 4.4 g/m(3) for gasification without the secondary air to 1.6 g/m(3) for gasification with the secondary air injected in the oxidization zone. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.