Applied catalysis for sustainable development of chemical industry in China

Progressing green chemical technologies is significant to the sustainable development of chemical industry in China, as the energy and environment problems increasingly became great challenges to the whole society. The scientific connotation of sustainable energy chemical engineering can be generalized as green carbon/hydrogen science which means optimization of carbon/hydrogen atom economics based on high efficient catalysis and low-carbon emission. This review illustrated recent advances in developing sustainable technologies for applied catalysis in chemical industry of China, including the fields of high efficient conversion of heavy oil, green petrochemical catalytic technologies, clean utilization of coal and natural gas, promoting sustainable resources and clean energy, etc. Moreover, from the view of industrial point, some important common scientific problems were discussed and summarized, such as the relation between molecular diffusion and catalyzing efficiency, homogeneous catalysis in heterogeneous catalysts, in situ or operando characterization of industrial catalysis, etc., aiming to supplying a forward roadmap to academia and/or industry.