Recently, ZJUI Assistant Professor (Civil Engineering) Binbin Li, together with Professor Yan XIAO and Associate Professor Tingju Zhu, etc., won a 2-year project funded by the President's Special Fund for Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. The project titled "Bio-based Materials and Engineering Application for Carbon Neutrality" aims to build an interdisciplinary platform for research on bio-based materials and corresponding engineering applications. Besides the professors in ZJUI, the project team consists of researchers from Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science and International Business School.

Following the trend of sustainable and green development, China has set a carbon-neutral goal: “China will formulate an action plan for peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” This goal inevitably involves the structural adjustment of energy resources and industrial systems in China. The key to achieve the carbon-neutral goal is the reduction of emissions in the construction industry, which conquers the largest part of carbon emission. Though focusing on the application of biomass materials in civil engineering, the project covers agriculture, engineering, economics, biology, and other disciplines. It aims to achieve carbon neutrality in the whole supply chain and conducts interdisciplinary collaboration research. It also purposes to organize excellent teams to actively strive for government-sponsored and industry-sponsored research projects at levels beyond the university to expand research results.

The project will assess the demand for water and land resources during the production of bio-based materials, investigate its influence on the ecological environment, study and improve their mechanical properties, and optimize their pratical utilization based on the temporal and spatial constraintss. In addition, the project will conduct the research on the long-term monitoring on the structural performance of bio-composites, and the intelligent design, manufacture, and assembly of modern bamboo structures, as well as the supply chain and its sustainability of biomass engineering materials.

 
The president's special fund for Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Zhejiang University is mainly used to support researchers to carry out projects, to support the construction of an excellent innovative team, and to develop fundamentality, supportability, and strategy of interdisciplinary research. The special fund is for the national scientific and technological innovation layout for 2035 and the goals and tasks of the ZJU's "14th Five-Year Plan" innovative development plan. It is geared to young and middle-aged researchers with a scientific research foundation and innovative thinking for collecting projects.
 

△ Workshop on Bio-based materials for Carbon Neutralized Society hosted by the Project Team