As one of the important in-situ upgrading technologies, catalytic aquathermolysis has attracted worldwide interest for heavy oil exploitation recently. Aiming to upgrade and visbreak a kind of super-heavy oil, we have synthesized a new type of catalyst - aromatic sulfonic copper to process it. The experimental results show that, using 0.2 wt.% catalyst and 25.0 wt.% water at 280 degrees C for 24 h, the viscosity of oil sample could be decreased by 95.5%, with 13.72% in the conversion of heavy content to light content. Furthermore, the structure and group compositions of heavy oil were characterized by FT-IR, GPC, EL, H-1 NMR and GC-MS. It is found that the catalyst could improve the pyrolysis of heavy oil, and remove some heteroatoms (S, O and N) in its molecules, which finally led to the upgrading and visbreaking of the oil. Additionally, in view of the low-cost for synthesis and simple preparation of this technique, it is likely to have some good application prospects. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.