From the multi-component system, some of the substances are extracted with appropriate liquid agents (or water) to make catalysts with porous structures. For example, the skeleton nickel catalyst is made by melting a quantity of nickel and aluminum in an electric furnace, and the melt becomes an alloy after cooling.

Each method for making catalysts is actually a combination of a series of operating units. For convenience, the name of the key and distinctive unit of operation is used as the name of the manufacturing method. The traditional methods include mechanical mixing, precipitation, impregnation, solution evaporation, thermal melting, immersion, ion exchange, etc. The new methods developed now include chemical bonding, fibrillation, etc.