A mathematical model was developed to describe the kinetics of steam gasification of palm kernel shell with in-situ CO2 capture while considering tar formation. The effect of gasification temperature, steam/biomass ratio, and sorbent/biomass ratio on the process efficiency was described using the calculated kinetics parameters. The parametric study indicated that the three variables promoted hydrogen production at different degree of influence. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the CHISA 2012 - 20th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering and PRES 2012 - 15th Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (Prague, Czech Republic 8/25-29/2012).