Rolling a smoke and contemplating the best way to go about working up the result of a rather intriguing nickel based catalyst with a pretty wide scope in respect of what it can reduce (aliphatic nitro groups to amines, oximes to amines, aliphatic double bonds, one form will reduce alkynes to alkenes selectively, desulfurizations, catalytic hydrogenations, hydrogenolysis, reduction of tellurium and selenium compounds of certain types in the presence of the corresponding sulfur compounds, aromatic nitro groups to anilines, azide reduction to amines, one form quite sensitive to steric constraints, the other not so, depending on the solvent the catalyst is prepared in, some of the variants are more active with respect at least to double bond reductions and desulfurizations than Raney nickel, and unlike Raney nickel, they aren't pyrophoric, which is most unusual for this sort of catalyst) I've been discovering of late (not an original discovery, rather, new to me, not something I can claim the credit for, although I do seem to be one of the early pioneers into the use of it in..certain fields and by the hobbyist chemist types.
Going to have my smoke, take meds and then go digging for more references concerning the stuff. Succeeded in its preparation and I believe, testing it on a substrate (a nitroalkene) certainly reduced the nitro group, since nitro compounds are often bright yellow, -NO2 group acts as a yellow chromophore in a great many nitro compounds and the color dissipated after the attempted catalytic hydrogenation. At low pressure too, a simple balloon taped over the mouth of a standard glass flask sufficed, no high-pressure hydrogenator vessel needed, in-situ generation of H2 with sodium borohydride worked just fine. Need to isolate the result and test it with something like bromine water or a solution of iodine to see if it decolorizes, if it does, that means that the double bond is still there (bromine water test for alkenes works by using a solution of elemental Br2 in H2O just enough to color the water, if exposed to an alkene the color of bromine disappears, as the Br2 adds across the double bond to give the corresponding bromide)
