Professor Zhen Fang went to Ningbo to seek cooperation in-depth with bioenergy enterprises

At the invitation of the Ningbo Agriculture Bureau, Professor Zhen Fang visited relevant bioenergy enterprises in Ningbo from September 21^st to 23^rd, 2025. On the morning of September 21, 2025 at 9:49 am, the sky was clear and cloudless. Professor Zhen Fang departed from Nanjing with great excitement and sat at the window of the southbound Ningbo high-speed railway train. He arrived in Ningbo at around 12:00 noon and met with the vice-mayor. After lunch, take a short break and drove with the leaders of the Agriculture Bureau to Mingzhou Thermal Power Co., Ltd. of Ningbo Energy Group to explore the profitability and sustainable development of bioenergy enterprises of the straw power generation and bamboo gas & charcoal co-production workshops with company leaders and engineers. In the next morning, he together with the leaders of the Agriculture Bureau went to the factory (owned by Decheng Biotechnology Company in Hangzhou) in Xiangshan, Ningbo. The company is building a straw-based polylactic acid factory using thermophilic anaerobic bacteria modified in Germany for hydrolysis and co-fermentation to produce lactic acid. Degradable polylactic acid has been tested in Germany, and the estimated cost is slightly higher than that from grain-based polylactic acid. Prof. Fang personally hopes that industrialization can be successful and it can replace petroleum-based plastics. After lunch, Prof. Fang and his delegation were invited to visit the Ningbo Academician Center and then went to Cixi city. The next morning, Prof. Fang had a discussion with young teachers from the School of Science and Technology at Ningbo University about his research experience. After lunch, he stepped onto the bullet-train at window heading north to Nanjing and ended his trip to Ningbo.