Aromatics including benzenes, olefins and naphthalenes derived from renewable biomass are of great importance on the potential substitution for diminishing fossil fuels. In this work, aromatics from biomass-derived sorbitol by hydrogenation and aromatization was investigated over the Ni/HZSM-5 and Ni/H beta catalysts in a fixed-bed reactor. The testing results showed that all the catalysts revealed 100% of sorbitol conversion, while the formation of aromatics and carbon species were various during the catalytic processing of sorbitol. The selectivity of aromatics was found to be 53.2% and 17.1% over the Ni/HZSM-5(38) and Ni/H beta catalyst, respectively. In addition, the catalysts were characterized by N-2 physical adsorption, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), H-2 temperature-programmed reduction (H-2-TPR), and temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia (NH3-TPD) techniques. The characterization results revealed that the Ni/HZSM-5(38) catalyst contained the optimum acidic sites and the structural property, which favor the hydrogenation and aromatization of sorbitol in the reaction. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.