On September 16, at the invitation of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Renewable Energy, Professor Zhang Zhanying from Queensland University of Technology in Australia visited the Guangzhou Institute of Energy, Chinese Academy of Sciences(GIEC), to deliver an academic lecture titled “Biorefining of Agricultural Biomass into Sustainable Functional Materials,” in which he systematically presented his team’s series of research findings on the production of sustainable functional materials using agricultural and forestry biomass as feedstock. Huang Zhen, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Office, presided over the lecture, and attendees engaged in an in-depth discussion on the content of the presentation.

Professor Zhang Zhanying’s team has long focused on research into the biorefining and high-value conversion of agricultural and forestry biomass and food processing by products, developing various types of functional materials based on biomass components such as cellulose, lignin, biosilica, hemicellulose, and pectin. In his presentation, Prof. Zhang provided a detailed overview of the latest advancements in each research area: First, carbon-based materials preparing hard carbon anode materials from lignin for use in batteries and supercapacitors, while optimizing electrochemical energy storage performance by modulating the lignin structure through methods such as ethanol pretreatment; second, nanocellulose and cellulose-based materials conducting research on the hydrophilic modification of nanocellulose, fabricating structural color films, and exploring diverse application scenarios for structural color materials; Third, silicon dioxide nanoparticles: the team has extracted bio-based silicon dioxide from agricultural waste such as rice husks with performance comparable to commercial products, and has investigated the enhancement of polymer composite properties through composites of these nanoparticles with lignin nanoparticles. In addition, Prof. Zhang also presented his team’s research progress in developing cellulose-based phase-change material carriers and biomass-based biodegradable materials.

During the Q&A session, participating faculty and students engaged in a lively discussion with Professor Zhang Zanying on key scientific issues such as the carbonization process for electrode materials, the pretreatment and modification of cellulose, and biodegradable membrane material systems. They also delved deeply into the challenges and potential technical breakthroughs in the industrialization of biomass-based functional materials.

Building on the international academic exchange platform provided by the “China-Australia Center for Biofuels and Biorefining,” this academic seminar further deepened academic exchanges between the GIEC and Queensland University of Technology in the fields of agricultural and forestry biomass biorefining and biomass-based functional materials, laying a solid foundation for future joint research collaborations between the two institutions in areas such as energy storage materials and biodegradable materials.