A microwave hydrothermal (MWH) method was used to deposit WO3 onto ZrO2-Al2O3 with various ZrO2 contents to prepare hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalysts with high WO3 loading (23 wt%) close to industrial hydrotreating, for achieving high W dispersion and weak W-support interaction. The catalysts with the same WO3 and ZrO2 contents were prepared by a conventional impregnation (IM) method as reference. The effects of catalyst preparation methods and ZrO2 contents on the catalyst property and dibenzothiophene HDS activity were investigated. The results show that the MWH method leads to highly dispersed octahedrally coordinated W species which are weakly linked on ZrO2-Al2O3 and easy to be reduced; no bulk WO3 crystallites are observed even at high ZrO2 content (50 wt%). Therefore, it causes better sulfidation and shorter WS2 slabs. Contrarily, the IM method induces W species to agglomerate into bulk WO3 crystallites which are poorly dispersed and hard to be reduced, which is further aggravated by ZrO2. The HDS activity of the MWH-prepared catalysts significantly increases with ZrO2 up to 40 wt% ZrO2. This catalyst shows 2 times higher rate constant and 1.64 times higher efficiency of HDS than the IM-prepared catalyst with the same ZrO2 content. For the IM-prepared catalysts, the HDS activity slightly increases at small amount of ZrO2 (10 wt%) and then decreases drastically. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.