A new concept for soot removal from inside a syngas environment has been Studied. Particulate emissions are retained in a soot trap downstream from a thermal partial oxidation (TPOX) reformer, while the syngas atmosphere itself is utilized as a gasification agent to achieve continuous and passive trap regeneration. This work analyses the performances of the loading and the regenerating phases of a wall flow soot trap in a syngas environment in an ad hoc developed test rig. A balance point between filtered and removed soot was actually reached at trap temperatures in the 800-1000 degrees C range with soot abatement efficiencies above 95 wt%. The particulate is obtained from a TPOX reactor operating in very rich fuel conditions, using methane as fuel. The final application of the reactor and trap assembly is a micro CHP system, based on an SOFC fed by a TPOX reformer. However, application to larger contexts (e.g. biomass gasification plants) can be envisaged. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.