Complex components and difficult degradation problem usually existes in the treatment of petrochemical wastewater,so it is difficult to achieve the expected purpose by bio-logical treatment alone.The combination of chemical pretreatment and biochemistry,that is,before the biological treatment,the first use of chemical means to transform refractory pollutants into easy biochemical substances achieves a good application effect.The mechanism and appli-cation situation of four pretreatment processes for petrochemical wastewater,including photocat-alytic oxidation,Fenton oxidation,wet oxidation and ozone oxidation,is reviewed in this paper.In view of the significant differences in the ability of each process to degrade organic matter,the suitable pretreatment process is proposed according to the characteristics of wastewater(such as organic matter concentration,toxicity,water temperature,pressure,etc.).