The Arrhenius plots and Eyring plots for various catalysts at the DBT HDS conversion lower than 30% are shown in Fig. 2. The active energies Ea are calculated by the Calculation 10 based on the slopes of the Arrhenius plots. The thermodynamic parameters including enthalpy changes ( H) and entropy changes ( S) are calculated according to the slopes and intercept of the linear Eyring plots respectively. The above three parameters are concluded in the Table 6. It shows that the values of Ea follow the sequence: NiMo/SBA-16 > NiMo/AT-10 > NiMo/AT-0 > NiMo/AT-5 > NiMo/AT-2.5 > NiMo/AT-7.5. It is well recognized that the higher active energy Ea is, the lower HDS efficiency is. The trend of Ea values can be related with the HDS efficiencies over various catalysts from Fig. 1. Meanwhile, the enthalpy changes ( H) and entropy changes ( S) for various catalysts exhibit the same increasing order of NiMo/AT-7.5 < NiMo/AT-2.5 < NiMo/AT-5 < NiMo/AT-0 < NiMo/AT-10 < NiMo/SBA-16. It should also be noteworthy that the lower activation enthalpy value will lead to a more rapid reaction rate for DBT HDS reaction. Therefore, the kinetic and thermodynamic studies demonstrate that NiMo/AT-x catalysts present better HDS performance than NiMo/SBA-16 due to the improvement of acidity and dispersion and distribution of active phases.