I am sorry to rain on this parade, but I do not think the prospects
for a commercial cold fusion project are good. I would love to be
proved wrong on this.
I have never seen an amateur experiment worth looking at.
I have enough trouble trying to get professionals to do this, and
they always have difficulty during the experiment. Cold fusion is
always harder than it looks. If you are going to do anything, you
should focus your efforts on encouraging skilled professionals to try
this experiment.
The key to all cold fusion experiments is the materials. If you know
how to do electrochemistry (or gas loading, or whatever the technique
is) and can get good materials the experiment is likely to work. If
you cannot get good materials it does not matter how skilled you are
or how many times you try. If I knew how to get good materials I
would get them. I once tried to buy some of the Johnson Matthey "Type
A palladium" that Martin used to recommend, but I did not have the
money for a $50,000 minimum order.
In my opinion, the most promising technique at the moment is the
nanoparticle experiment first done by Arata and recently replicated
by Kitamura. I believe this is highly dependent upon the material. If
you can find someone to make a material is likely that it will work.
I am trying to persuade several people to try making some material.
The calorimetry employed by Arata and Kitamura was abominable, but it
was abominable in different ways which I hope cancel out one another.
I believe these results are real despite the problems. I wish I could
persuade someone to try this experiment using reasonable 19th or 20th
century calorimetry. Never mind 21st century; I want something more
convincing than Lavoisier would have rigged up in one afternoon.
- Jed
