Utilizing Biomass is the most promising topic nowadays as burning fossil fuels is alarming. So, what are the important applications of biomass??
It is rather difficult to go from an unordened, amorphous structure to an ordered, graphenic structure. Even to go to a graphitic structure from biomass is difficult. Have never seen that large amounts have been produced from biomass, but an interesting subject if it ispossible.
I'm agree with Henrik Romar, the biomass derived carbon are amorphous with numerous defects (intrinsic defects and heteroatom-induced defects). Some carbon nanosheets or nanoflakes could be obtained from biomass precursors using templating method or exfoliation method. These carbon nanosheets or nanoflakes are all pseudograhite (hard carbon). Some defects could still exist even after high temperature treatment (graphitization) over 2800 ℃.
Synthesis of graphene from biomass is possible but by CVD method .. see this interesting paper from Tour lab (DOI: 10.1021/nn202625c).. they synthesized graphene from dog poop and other biomass..
I read Tour's work about the biomass derived "graphene" prepared by CVD method before. In my opinion, the characterizations about the products were not enough. More characterizations of those biomass derived "graphene" should be given. In addition, the Raman spectra in that paper showed that defects still existed in the products. These Raman spectra were similar to that of the pig bone derived carbon[Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 12118]. Strictly speaking, all these biomass-derived carbon could not be graphene.
Up to me it might be possible to create biomass based carbons where we can find regions with graphitic/graphenic properties. This process needs catalytic metals and the regions are created close to the catalysts.
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