When cold fusions was first announced (simultaneously by the Pons/Fleischman group and Steven Jones), it looked simple enough that a home experimenter could do it, so I decided to try.
P&F were electro-chemists, and had calculated that the pressures experienced by adsorbed deuterium were enough to create fusion. So they built a calorimeter, and claimed to be measuring excess heat from their apparatus - more heat out than was put in. Their claims came in the form of a very large reported heat gain - ratio of heat out to heat in.
Jones, a physicist, was trying to explain the excess Helium 3 and Tritium measured from volcano emissions. He coincidentally ended up using a similar apparatus to P&F in order to test his theory that fusion in the earth's metals at high pressure was taking place
The two groups, who had been working independently, both in Utah, released their results the same day.
Interested in trying this myself, I bought the necessary materials - palladium, heavy water, platinum wire (for recombination of H2O), glassware, etc. I already had the instrumentation and power supply. Yes - you could buy heavy water (maybe still can). At the time it was a dollar a gram. I started building a closed cell calorimeter in my basement.
I also joined a Usenet email list of scientists and experimenters working on this.
But, wheI n was finally able to read the actual paper by P&F, I was apalled at the fact that they hadn't used a closed calorimeter. In other words, the deuterium and oxygen released by the hydrolysis was not captured or measured. Neither was the heat released from the top of the cells.
Their results depended strongly on assumptions about the amount of heat lost due to evaporation in their open, hot test tubes. And their claims of tremendous energy gains were based on a formula where the denominator was the subtraction of two very-close values, one theoretical, one experimental and dependent on the calculations of lost heat. That sort of denominator greatly magnifies any error in the ratio you report.
The actual claimed absolute excess energy was a very small quantity compared to the measured energy input into the system. It sounded a lot larger in their formulation.
Others on the mailing list pointed out that the test tubes didn't contain much deuterium. If heavy water (D2O) is exposed to the atmosphere, the natural continuous exchange of molecules at the air/water interface will cause the concentration of D2O to go way down, replaced by the H2O in the air.
There were also questions about the effect of mixing in the test tubes, and other issues.
The theoretical calculation by P&F of the "presssure" the deuterium would experience when adsorbed into palladium turned out to be inapplicable. Yes, the value was enormous, but it wasn't true pressure in the sense that counted - it was a different quantity just measured in pressure units (this is from my reading - I'm not an expert).
Jones, a careful experimentalist, was claiming only a very small amount of neutron emissions. However, it was so small as tobe questionable. He later tried his experiments underground, where it would be shielded from cosmic rays, and his excess neutron count was lower, againjust slightly more than there should be without fusion, but not convincing. And Jones was never claiming a new energy source, just that a small amount of fusion might take place deep in the earth, explaining the He3. At least one experimental paper suggests that Jones' theory was correct, and maybe his experiment.
Back to the P&F replications...
One member of the mailing list, an experimental physicst at a national laboratory, got well ahead of me in building a closed cell, continuously monitored calorimeter. Meanwhile, I was having troubles working the palladium. You have to melt it at very high temperatures (your retina will be damaged if you even look at it without welders' goggles), and it has to be done in a high temperature crucible. It's tricky, and outside my expertise. I still have a little blob of it.
With the other person doing a good experiment well before me, and the negative or very questionable results coming in from experimenters, I decided to abandon my efforts and just watch the papser coming out s and the reactison in the mailing list.
Every exciting possible experimental result turned out to be experimental error, or was not large enough to be meaningful.
The national lab experimentalist on the mailing list did an elegant job, and reported no excess heat.
To this day, claims of nuclear processes continue. But, they are either from highly questionable sources, or are of values just at the edge of the theoretically predicted no-fusion results. I do not find them at all convincing.
Hence, 'cold fusion' seems unlikely, and the overall effort fits well into the category of 'Pathological Science.'
We shall see how this author proves that cold fusion is real (unless he is teasing us with muon catalyzed fusion or whatever0.
Interestingly, it is not that hard to create room temperature fusion. Get some deuterium, adsorb it into a metal, and use that as a cathode of a vacuum tube, and embed the rest into the plate of one. Apply around 20,000 volts (less than an old fashioned color TV), This will occasionally result in fusion events. Of course, there will be no energy gain.
