What is "raney nickel"

Raney nickel , also called spongy nickel, is a fine-grained solid composed mostly of nickel derived from a nickel-aluminium alloy. A variety of grades are known, but most are gray solids. Some are pyrophoric, most are used as air-stable slurries. Raney nickel is used as a reagent and as a catalyst in organic chemistry. It was developed in 1926 by American engineer Murray Raney for the hydrogenation of vegetable oils.See:

• Raney, Murray, U.S. patent 1,628,190 (filed: 14 May 1926 ; issued: 10 May 1927).
• M. S. Wainwright, "3.2 Skeletal metal catalysts" in: Gerhard Ertl, Helmut Knözinger, and Jens Weitkamp, ed.s, Preparaton of Solid Catalysts (Weinheim, Federal Republic of Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag, 1999), pages 28–29.