Bicyclic and multi-cyclic hydrocarbons usually have high density over 0.87 g/cm(3), which is very popular to synthesize from biomass-derived renewable chemicals, but their cryogenic properties need to be further improved for practical applications. In this work, we synthesized ethyl-substituted bicyclic high-performance hydrocarbons with improved cryogenic properties from the biomass-derived 4-ethylphenol and phenylmethaol. For the alkylation reaction between 4-ethylphenol with phenylmethanol, the reaction conditions were optimized, under which the conversion of phenylmethanol can achieve 100% with monoalkylated products (2-benzyl-4-ethylphenol and 3-benzyl-4-ethylphenol) selectivity of 71%. After hydrodeoxygenation catalyzed by a mixture catalyst of Pd/C and HZSM-5, the alkylation products were mainly converted to the ethyl-substituted dicyclohexylmethane. The obtained fuel shows a high density of 0.873 g/cm(3) (20 degrees C), gravimetric net heat of combustion of 42.7 MJ/kg, and the freezing point of -42 degrees C, which is promising to serve as a blend component for jet fuel application. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.