This study reports the experimental results for the pyrolysis of pistachio shell under different conditions in a tubular reactor under a nitrogen flow. For the different conditions of pyrolysis temperature, nitrogen flow rate and heating rate, pyrolysis temperature of 773 K gave the highest bio-oil yield with a value of 27.7% when the heating rate and carrier gas flow rate were chosen as 300 K min(-1) and 100 cm(3) min(-1) respectively. Column chromatography was applied to this bio-oil and its subfractions were characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR and H-1-NMR. Aliphatic subfraction was conducted to gas chromatography mass spectroscopy for further characterization. The results for the characterization show that using pistachio shell as a renewable source to produce valuable liquid products is applicable via pyrolysis. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.