Development of Raney Nickel
During his time at Lookout Oil and Refining Raney was responsible the production of hydrogen which was used in the hydrogenation of vegetable oils. During that time the industry used a nickel catalyst prepared from nickel(II) oxide. Believing that better catalysts could be produced, around 1921 he started to perform independent research on this matter while still working for Lookout Oil. In 1924 he produced a nickel-silicon alloy which, after being treated with sodium hydroxide, was found to be five times more active than the best catalyst used in the hydrogenation of cottonseed oil. He was granted a US patent for this discovery in 1925.
In 1926 Raney produced a nickel-aluminium alloy, also in a 1:1 ratio, following a procedure similar to the one used for the nickel-silicon catalyst, and he found that the resulting catalyst was even more active than the previous one. This catalyst, now commonly known now as Raney nickel, was the subject of a patent he obtained in 1927.
It may be of interest to note that Raney's choice of nickel-aluminium ratio was fortuitous and without any real scientific basis. However, this is the preferred alloy composition for production of Raney nickel catalysts currently in use. To this, Raney himself said in an interview "I was just lucky... I had an idea for a catalyst and it worked the first time."
Read more about this topic: Murray Raney
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