Isn't this just cold fusion? The end paragraph even credits an "International Conference on Cold Fusion".
And them being chemists not physicists.
And the University of Utah issuing a press release before the anything was peer reviewed.
The whole episode is is an example of what can go wrong with science. This article shows what clearly could have been a useful and productive field of investigation became poisoned to the extent that no significant research could go on for a quarter century and still the authors have to go to great pains to distance themselves from Fleischman and Pons.
That was a huge part of it - I wrote a paper on the controversy for a class. The physicists basically said "That can't work, it must be a chemical reaction." Regardless of the physics working or not, they were effectively saying two chemists couldn't properly do calorimetry on a cell containing 4 elements that don't do very much chemically. This a much harsher thing than the chemists saying physics overlooked something.
No. You still have to heat the fuel. The claim of cold fusion was tnat the fuel could just sit there at room temperature and fuse.
For example, lab at top floor or in mountain area may produce much more heat than lab in basement at sea level.