The conventional PID control has been proven insufficient and incapable for this particular petro-chemical process. This paper proposes a nonlinear adaptive predictive functional control (NAPFC) algorithm based on the TakagiSugeno (T-S) model for average cracking outlet temperature (ACOT) of the ethylene cracking furnace. In this algorithm, in order to overcome the effect on system performance under model mismatch, the structure parameters of the T-S fuzzy model are confirmed, and the model consequent parameters are identified online using the forgetting factor least-square method. Prediction output is calculated according to the identified parameters instead of computing the Diophantine equation, thereby obtaining directly the predictive control law and avoiding the complex computation of the inverse of the matrix. Application results on ACOT of the ethylene cracking furnace show the proposed control strategy has strong tracking ability and robustness.