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Charcoal produced from biomass, otherwise known as biochar, has many applications, including use as a high energy cooking fuel in developing countries, a soil amendment to improve soil characteristics and filtration and pollution abatement. In addition, the environmental implication of using biochar for carbon sequestration is an area of particular interest in the field of global climate change. The current methods for the production of charcoal are very inefficient, polluting and uncontrolled or else they are expensive and technology heavy. In this study, a top-lit, updraft (TLUD) gasifier is being developed to produce biochar by pyrolysis. Most of the charcoal produced today is from forestry products, resulting in deforestation, erosion and other environmental problems associated with deforestation. In an effort to reduce the demand for forestry resources, annual agricultural waste is the biomass of interest in this study. The methods for producing biochar from crop waste biomass are a relatively new area of investigation and information about operating parameters is scarce. Crop wastes such as peanut hulls, rice hulls and switch grass as well as wood chips and sawdust have been tested in the TLUD gasifier. These materials have different moisture contents, particle sizes and bulk densities and therefore, systematically varied operation parameters have been applied to these materials. Preliminary guidelines for the operation parameters with different biomasses and the production of biochar in similar systems have been established from the collected data and will be presented.