The global ethylene industry has witnessed rapid development in recent years. In 2025, the total global ethylene production capacity exceeded 230 million tons, among which China’s ethylene capacity reached 64 million tons, with a projected breakthrough of 72 million tons by 2026. China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest ethylene producer.
China and the U.S. currently dominate global new ethylene capacity expansion with distinct development models. North America relies on low-cost shale gas to develop ethane cracking units, while China has built large-scale integrated refining and chemical projects to achieve industrial self-sufficiency, adopting a diversified raw material supply structure.
The construction of large-scale ethylene plants demands continuous improvement in the single-unit capacity of cracking furnaces. For liquid feedstock cracking furnaces, the mainstream single-unit ethylene capacity ranges from 150,000 to 200,000 tons per year, and advanced furnace models can reach 250,000 to 300,000 tons per year. For gas-fed cracking furnaces utilizing ethane, propane and other gas raw materials, the conventional single-unit capacity is 200,000 to 300,000 tons per year, and large advanced models can hit 300,000 to 400,000 tons per year.
China’s ethylene industry originated in the 1960s. Driven by continuous technological progress, the scale of single-set ethylene plants has expanded dramatically. The mainstream plant capacity in the 1970s stood at 300,000 tons per year, while the current single-set scale has grown to 1.2 to 1.5 million tons per year.
Over the past decade, China’s ethylene industry has achieved unprecedented leapfrog development, with its global industrial influence rising steadily. In 2019, China’s ethylene capacity surpassed that of Europe for the first time. In 2021, it overtook the Middle East market. In 2022, China’s ethylene capacity reached 49.33 million tons per year, exceeding the U.S. capacity of 43.3 million tons per year. Following its status as the world’s top refining country, China has become the global largest ethylene producer, solidifying its leading position as the world’s top petrochemical nation.
China’s ethylene technological independence started from the renovation and upgrading of existing production facilities. A typical milestone was the upgrading of the 300,000-ton/year ethylene plant at Yanshan Petrochemical in the 1990s, which expanded the plant’s annual capacity to 450,000 tons after renovation. As China’s first iconic ethylene transformation project, Yanshan Petrochemical’s revamp kicked off the country’s localization and independent innovation journey for ethylene equipment and technologies, laying a vital technical and practical foundation for the subsequent nationwide upgrading of domestic ethylene plants.
Subsequently, Sinopec launched the second round of large-scale ethylene renovation, with Yanshan Petrochemical serving as the core demonstration benchmark. The upgrade boosted the single-plant ethylene capacity to 700,000 to 800,000 tons per year. The renovation fully utilized the existing public engineering facilities of old plants and continuously increased the application proportion of domestic equipment. In this second-phase upgrade centered on Yanshan’s technical experience, the domestic equipment localization rate reached 80%, with the average comprehensive investment cost of per 10,000-ton ethylene capacity falling to RMB 120 million.
New advanced energy-saving and efficient technologies were widely applied in Yanshan Petrochemical’s renovation process, reducing plant energy consumption by approximately 15% and greatly enhancing the core competitiveness of domestic petrochemical enterprises. The mature technical experience and renovation models summarized from Yanshan’s two rounds of upgrades were widely promoted across China’s ethylene industry, driving the overall technological progress of the sector.
Through joint research and breakthroughs by domestic scientific research, design, manufacturing and operational institutions, based on the practical experience accumulated from Yanshan Petrochemical’s technological transformation, a full range of core major petrochemical equipment has achieved complete localization, including ethylene cracking furnaces, reaction equipment, heat exchange equipment, large-scale compressors, industrial pumps and special machinery. Calculated by total investment, the localization rate of core equipment for 300,000-ton/year ethylene plants has reached 70%.
In the 21st century, with the rapid growth of China’s national economy, the petrochemical industry entered a peak development stage, and large-scale 1-million-ton-level ethylene plants became the mainstream development trend, benefiting from the foundational technological progress achieved by Yanshan Petrochemical’s pioneering transformations.
On July 26, 2010, China’s independently developed CBL-Ⅶ double-chamber cracking furnace with a capacity of 150,000 tons per year achieved successful one-time commissioning, marking a key breakthrough in domestic cracking furnace technology.
On August 13, 2013, China’s ethylene industry achieved another landmark leap. The 800,000-ton/year ethylene plant at Wuhan Petrochemical was successfully put into operation at one time. This project represented the first industrial application of Sinopec’s self-developed complete set of million-ton-level ethylene technologies. For the first time, independently manufactured core equipment including three key compressors, cold boxes and three catalytic hydrogenation catalysts were fully applied in a single plant. Meanwhile, self-developed green and efficient technologies such as flare emission reduction and near-zero-emission start-stop operation were successfully deployed.
In 2021, Sinopec’s research and industrial application project of Complete Set of Million-ton Ethylene Technologies for Complex Raw Materials won the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, China’s highest honor in industrial technological innovation. Decades of pioneering exploration and technical accumulation by Yanshan Petrochemical in ethylene renovation and localization laid solid practical and theoretical foundations for this major technological achievement.
As a key participant of the award-winning project, Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical (ZRCC) has built two large-scale ethylene units adopting fully independent domestic technologies iterated and upgraded based on Yanshan’s early technical system. At present, the Zhenhai petrochemical base boasts a crude oil processing capacity of 27 million tons per year, an ethylene production capacity of 2.2 million tons per year, a terminal annual throughput of 120 million tons, and a tank storage capacity of approximately 17 million cubic meters, with total assets nearing RMB 100 billion. It has been built into a world-class, high-tech, integrated green petrochemical base.
The mastery of independent core technologies has enabled China to construct world-class large-scale petrochemical bases represented by Zhenhai Refining & Chemical, providing stable and sufficient raw material support for national economic development.
Through years of continuous technological research and iteration, China has fully mastered complete sets of core industrial technologies, including ten-million-ton-level oil refining technologies, million-ton-level ethylene technologies, aromatic hydrocarbon technologies, and polyester technologies.
These independent technologies have completely resolved the supply bottlenecks of fuels, synthetic resins, synthetic fibers and other key chemical materials essential to national economic development. As the foundation of downstream textile and light industry development, the prosperous domestic petrochemical industry has freed garment, textile, luggage, footwear, toy and other manufacturing sectors from reliance on imported raw materials, while enabling prominent cost advantages for downstream industrial chains.
