Despite otherwise indisputable advantages, biomass burning is associated with significant emissions of fine particles. The different behavior of dissimilar types of biomass during thermal decomposition can be explained to some extent by the different composition, i.e. the different content of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The main aim of this work was to find the emission characteristics of these three components during heating in a thermogravimetric analyzer. The monitored parameters were the heating rate and the oxygen content in the combustion atmosphere. The output is the dependence of the sample mass and also the corresponding distributions of particles on the temperature. The results show considerable differences between the individual samples, but in general the pyrolysis of cellulose produces the highest particle emissions. Higher oxygen content in the combustion atmosphere and lower heating rates cause earlier sample decomposition and reduce particulate emissions. This is followed by an evaluation of the transferability to a sample of a real biomass based on its known composition using a simple weighted arithmetic mean. Useful information on particle sampling and electron microscope visualization, supplemented by images of particles from the pyrolysis of selected samples can also be found in this work.