I remember a report of making gold from Mercury. There was a movement that was replacing mercury switches, mercury lights and etc to minimize exposure to mercury. The mercury was then converted to stable form to bury it in Canada. One of scientists came up with making gold.
The problem is that some mercury was used to mine gold. To verify if an electric arc to mercury creates gold, I first evaporated the mercury to remove the gold (the source it used was used to mine gold). Then I exposed the purified mercury as an electrode in an arc through hydrogen for period of time, then evaporated the mercury a second time. I found a flake of gold was left when the supposed purified mercury was evaporated. I was not impressed.
An arc in hydrogen can create pseudo-neutrons as a result of electrogravity. One of the isotopes of mercury can be converted to gold by pseudo-neutron absorption. It would be a difficult business to pursue.
I agree this is not commercially interesting, but in practice is an effect that is not expected and not accepted as a possible outcome, so the scientific value of such an experiment is high.
