An efficient analytical method combining pyrolysis and capillary GC/MS has been developed for determination and quantitation of targeted polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.The limit of detection ranged from 0.29 μg/g to 43.46 μg/g,and repeatability values were between 0.1％ and 8.2％ for blank spiked samples and between 0.1％ and 9.8％ for real samples of heavy oils.Through application of the proposed method in hydrotreating processes,it has been found out that heavy oils before and after the specified hydroprocessing treatment exhibited a diverse PAHs distribution which might be determined by the discrepancy in their intrinsic contents and hydrogenation reactivity.Furthermore,the hydrogenation reactivity of different polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons was further investigated and discovered to be more interrelated to molecular structure and rings alignment or conjugation mode.