Selective ring opening of aromatics over bifunctional catalysts is expected to increase gas oil cetane number. In this work, we have focused on iridium supported on amorphous silicaalumina (ASA) for catalytic hydroconversion of tetralin in the presence of H2S at 250-350 °C, using a continuous high-pressure (4 MPa) microreactor. A detailed study of the decomposition of the Ir acetylacetonate precursor by thermal analysis and in situ X-ray diffraction has allowed us to optimize the activation treatment. A simple reduction in H2 at 350 °C leads to well-dispersed nanoparticles (size 1.4 ± 0.2 nm). Unlike Ir/SiO2 and Ir/Al2O3 catalysts, Ir/ASA is stable and resists to poisoning by sulphur. The main tetralin hydroconversion products are hydrogenation products (decalins) and ringopening/contraction products (ROCP). Advanced analysis by tow-dimensional gas chromatography(GC��GC-MS) shows that ROCP are composed mostly of saturated and aromatic ring-contractionproducts, and to a lower extent of saturated and aromatic ring-opening products. The catalyticperformances of Ir/ASA could be modified through support, alloy and size effects. For a Si:Alcomposition of ca. 0.5, the Brönsted acidity of the support is maximal, which leads to the highest totalactivity and ROCP selectivity. Besides, the activity increases with palladium addition, and the ROCPselectivity is maximum at intermediate Ir-Pd composition. TEM-EDX analyses show that the Pdcontent of nanoparticles increases with their size. Finally, the ROCP selectivity increases dramaticallywith particle size, which was tuned in the 2-8 nm range by thermal sintering in a wet atmosphere. Thisis explained by a decrease of the amount of metallic sites with respect to Brönsted acid sites within abifunctional mechanism.
