Developing highly active hydrogenation catalysts for deep aromatics saturation is of great importance in the production of ultraclean diesel fuel at a low cost. Toward this goal, we synthesized a mesoporous zeolite ZSM-5 (MZSM-5) that was cost-effective and available on a large scale, and used it as a support for the preparation of highly efficient metal sulfide catalysts (NiMoS/MZSM-5 and CoMoS/MZSM-5) for the deep hydrogenation of phenanthrene. The intrinsic activity of the NiM0S/MZSM-5 catalyst (7.4 x 10(-4) mol kg(-1) s(-1)) was much higher than that of the alumina-supported NiMo catalyst (NiMOS/gamma-Al2O3, 4.8 x 10(-4) mol kg(-1) s(-1)), and the selectivity of the deep hydrogenation products over NiM0S/MZSM-5 (20.9%) was higher than for NiMOS/gamma-Al2O3 (15.2%). Compared with gamma-Al2O3, the relatively weak metal-support interaction could facilitate the formation of polymolybdates on MZSM-5. After sulfidation, the more multistacked MoS2 active phases were formed on the MZSM-5, enhancing the hydrogenation activity of the NiMOS/MZSM-5 catalyst. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.