A technical and economic evaluation of four com-mercially available small coal gasifiers was carried out. All four gasifiers were found to be suitable for producing industrial fuel gas from Canadian lignites in small dedicated plants producing from 2.11 to 31.65 × 1012J/day(2to30 × 109BTU/day). Well-proven technology is available to produce either low heating value gas (air blown) or medium heating value gas (oxygen blown), and in both cases the gas can be cooled and cleaned for applications where contamination of the users' process by impurities in the hot raw gas cannot be tolerated. It was concluded that hot raw, low heating value gas can be produced for approximately $1.90/GJ ($2.00/MMBTU), medium heating value gas for $2.84/GJ ($3.00/MMBTU), and cold, clean, medium heating value gas for $4.50/GJ (4.75/MMBTU) in terms of early 1979 dollars