Over the last two decades, numerous studies have been undertaken in identifying the inhibiting and deactivating effects of basic nitrogen compounds present in heavy gas oil (HGO) on catalyst active sites; however, limited information is available on the presence and effect of neutral nitrogen species, which have shown to exhibit both inhibitory and deactivating effects comparable to those of the basic species. A novel pretreatment process employing the heterogeneously cross-linked macroporous polymer poly(glycidyl methacrylate) as the hydrophilic support coupled with organic compound tetranitrofluorenone has been synthesized in a four stage procedure for the selective removal of neutral nitrogen heterocyclic compounds from heavy gas oil using charge transfer complexes. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), low temperature N-2 adsorption-desorption (BET), CHNOS elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), epoxy content titration, and thermo gravimetry/differential thermal analyzer (TG/DTA) were employed for determining the optimum parameters during the synthesis of each stage. The optimized polymer has shown promising results with successful removal of up to 6.7% of the nitrogen species in a single contact using approximately 15 wt.% of the polymer with respect to HGO, while having little to no influence on the sulfur species. The reusability of the polymer has also shown consistency in the selective removal of nitrogen compounds, with continuous removal rates in the range of 6.7%. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.