Bio-oil can be obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass and maintains a closed carbon cycle with no net increase in atmospheric CO2 level, making the environment cleaner. However, the high content of oxygenates in bio-oil result in low heating values, chemical and thermal instability, and immiscibility with hydrocarbon fuels. One effective upgrading process is hydrotreatment using hydrodeoxygenation catalysts. We have synthesised the catalyst with a novel support based on bentonite clays by the pillarization technique, i.e. NiMoS/PILC and results showed that our catalysts were superior to commercial NiMoS/Al2O3. A crucial part of optimising the catalyst is to understand how the reactants move across the surface. To this end, we wish to use quasielastic neutron scattering to study the motion of a lignin model compound, guaiacol (2-methoxyphenol), as a liquid and in the adsorbed state.