2 1. Experiment 1.1 Catalysts Nafion-115 and Nafion-212 resins with average pore size about 4 nm 1 were supplied by DuPont Company. Amberlyst-15 and Amberlyst-36 resins were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. According to the information offered by supplier,the average pore diameters of Amberlyst-15 and Amberlyst-36 resin are about 29 nm and 24 nm respectively. H-β (SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 = 25), H-USY (SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 = 12) and H-ZSM-5 (SiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 = 140) were provided by Nankai University. Sulfated

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... ive carbon, (denoted as AC-SO 3 H) was homemade according to the method described in our previous work 2 . As the precursor, 2.0 g active carbon (supplied by NORIT Company) was added to 30 mL concentrated sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4 , 98%) in a glass tube at room temperature. Then, the tube was heated at 523 K for 24 h under the protection of nitrogen flow (10 mL min -1 ). After cooling down to room temperature and filtration, the solid was washed thoroughly with plenty of hot water (353 K) until no SO 4 2was detected in the filtrate. Zirconium phosphate (ZrP) was obtained according to literature 3 by the precipitation of 1.0 mol L -1 ZrCl 2 O• 8H 2 O and 1.0 mol L -1 NH 4 H 2 PO 4 aqueous solution at a molar ratio of P/Zr = 2.0. The precipitate was filtrated, washed with water, dried at 373 K overnight and calcined in air at 673 K for 4 h. The AC-SO 3 H, ZrP, H-ZSM-5, H-USY, H-β catalysts used in this work were powders with particle size less than 0.4 mm. The Amberlyst-15 and Amberlyst-36 resins used in this work were beads with diameters around 0.7 mm and 0.4 mm respectively. The Nafion resins used in this work were films (thickness: 51 μm for Electronic Supplementary Material (ESI) for Chemical Communications This journal is 3 Nafion-212 and 127 μm for Nafion-115) which were cut into about 2×5 mm pieces by scissors before used for the reaction. Pd/C catalyst used in HDO step was prepared by incipient wetness impregnation of the HNO 3 treated active carbon with the aqueous solutions of PdCl 2 . The products were kept at room temperature for 12 h, dried at 393 K for 6 h, and then reduced by hydrogen flow (60 mL min -1 g cat -1 ) at 623 K for 2 h. After cooled down in hydrogen to room temperature, the catalysts were passivated with 1% O 2 in N 2 (V/V). The metal content in Pd/C catalyst was 5% by weight (denoted as 5 wt%).