A porous solid catalyst made from an activated alloy of nickel and aluminium. The nickel is the catalytic metal with the aluminium as the structural support. It was developed by American mechanical engineer Murray Raney (1885–1966) in 1926 for the hydrogenation of vegetable oil and is now used in hydrogenation reactions in various forms of organic synthesis. It is widely used as an industrial catalyst for the conversion of olefins and acetylenes to paraffins, nitriles, and nitro compounds to amines, and benzene to cyclohexane amongst others.