A half century ago, Rosalind Franklin identified two distinct families of organic materials: those that becomegraphitic during carbonization at high temperatures and those that do not. According to Franklin, sucrose-derived biocarbons showed "no trace of homogeneous development of the true graphitic structure, even afterheating to 3000
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C" [
Proc. R. Soc. A 1951,
209, 196-218]. Franklin concluded that "non-graphitizing" carbons(e.g., sucrose biocarbons) are typically formed from oxygen-rich or hydrogen-poor substances that developa "strong system of cross-linking, which immobilizes the structure and unites the crystallites in a rigid mass".In this work, we show that there is a spectrum of non-graphitizing biocarbons ranging from those that releaselittle CO during carbonization at temperatures approaching 1000
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C to those that strongly and persistentlyemit CO during carbonization at temperatures approaching 1000
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C. Typically, very low-ash biocarbons arenot persistent CO emitters, but biocarbons with moderate ash contents can also be a member of this class iftheir ash lacks the catalytic species K, P, Mg, and/or Na that appear to be responsible for persistent COevolution at 1000
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C.