Trends in industrial ethylene production: Innovation in process and catalyst design

In this Activity article, Prof. Lichen Liu (associate professor at Tsinghua University) and Prof. Guoqing Wang (chief research fellow of the SINOPEC group at the SINOPEC [Beijing] Research Institute of Chemical Industry) exchange views from industrial and academic perspectives on the trends in ethylene production in the chemical industry and the current challenges in developing advanced oxide- and zeolite-based catalysts for ethylene production through catalytic cracking. Furthermore, they give perspectives on the alternative processes for ethylene production and the promising directions in catalyst design and process engineering.