Energy is the major facilitator of the modern life. Every developed and developing economy requires access to advanced sources of energy to support its growth and prosperity. Declining worldwide crude oil reserves and increasing energy needs has focused attention on developing existing unconventional fossil fuels like oil shale and renewable resources such as biomass. Sustainable, renewable and reliable resources of domestically produced biomass comparing to wind and solar energy is a sensible motivation to establish a small-scale power plant using biomass as feed to supply electricity demand and heat for rural development. The work in Paper I focuses on the possibility of water pollution from spent oil shale which should be studied before any significant commercial production is attempted. In Paper II, the proposed Aspen models for oil shale pyrolysis is to identify the key process parameters for the reactor and optimize the rate of production of syncrude from oil shale. The work in Paper III focuses on 1. Design and operation of a vertical downdraft reactor, 2. Establishing an optimum operating methodology and parameters to maximize syngas production through process testing. Finally in Paper IV, a proposed Aspen model for biomass gasification simulates a real biomass gasification system discussed in Paper III --Abstract, page iv
