Catalysts are important additives that are used to increase the material and energy efficiency of chemical reactions and processes. Although catalysts operate in cycles that should restore their initial activity over and over again, they do deactivate over time. Researchers from Utrecht University and University of Twente have now developed a powerful analytical tool that marks dead catalyst particles for deletion, providing a technique to physically remove them from a stream of particles. They published their results on 9 December in Nature Catalysis.