The chemical industry remains one of the world’s largest industrial energy consumers and a major source of direct industrial CO₂ emissions due to the thermodynamic and kinetic requirements of its energy-intensive processes and heavy reliance on fossil-based hydrocarbons. A more sustainable approach is to replace fossil feedstocks with bio-derived molecules and to develop more energy-efficient reactions, which often rely on heterogeneous catalysis. An example of this is the oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of bio-based or conventional ethanol over iron-molybdate catalysts, which provides a sustainable alternative to the large-scale production of acetaldehyde using the homogeneous Wacker-Höchst ethylene oxidation process.
