Efficient conversion of biomass into biofuels is still a challenge, and predictive modeling tools have the potential to accelerate the development and deployment of new conversion technologies, such as biomass thermochemical conversion. The high variability in the physical properties of biomass and their influence on biomass devolatilization hinder the deployment of detailed particle models for biomass devolatilization. In this work, we focus on the modeling of biomass devolatilization and evaluate the impact of variability in the physical properties of biomass on the validation of devolatilization models against experiments. For this purpose, we develop a one-dimensional spherically symmetric intra-particle heat and mass transfer model that describes the devolatilization of a porous solid biomass particle coupled with a lumped chemical kinetic model. Thermal conductivities of biomass and char, and specific heat capacity of biomass are varied and the predictions of the devolatilization model are compared with the experiments of maple wood sphere devolatilization. © 2018 Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute. All rights reserved.