Air gasification was conducted with fractions of construction woody wastes in a two-stage gasifier, consisting of a fluidized bed zone and a tar cracking zone. The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of reaction conditions and additives on the composition of producer gas and tar content in producer gas. A producer gas obtained with activated carbon of 540 g at an ER of 0.26 was mainly composed of H(2) (25 vol.%), CO (22 vol.%) and CH(4) (5 vol.%). Regarding tar removal efficiency, activated carbon was better than olivine. The tar removal rate with virgin activated carbon reached up to 80%. The reuse of spent activated carbon caused an efficiency loss in tar removal to some extent. Overall, it seems that the strong need for intensive downstream tar removal measurements can be removed with the use of a two-stage gasifier and the application of activated carbon. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.