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 a novel support for the catalyst based on bentonite clays by the pillarization technique, i.e. NiMoS/PILC and results showed that our catalysts were superior to commercial NiMoS/Al2O3. We would like to understand the details of the interaction between the catalyst and the adsorbate by using guaiacol as a lignin model compound. INS is ideally suited to investigation as shown by previous work on the closely related CoMo/Al2O3 hydrodesulfurisation catalyst.