Sky high oil prices are leading to a lot of innovation in the world of energy efficiency, with new methods to extract hydrogen from water and mix it with petrol & gasoline attracting a lot of attention.

In 1893, Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine using peanut oil as its fuel source. He successfully experimented with a wide range of vegetable oils and even coal dust to run his engine, which was more fuel-efficient than the internal combustion engine. Those early efforts were subsequently ignored, however, as a process developed to refine oil into what came to be known as diesel fuel.

However the surging price of petrol & gasoline and concerns about the decline in availability of fossil fuels have led to renewed interested in Diesel’s early work. This has helped to push the development of Biodiesel, a form of Biofuel that uses vegetable oils and cellulosic matter.

Oil at well over $100 a barrel has also led to a surge of interest in methods that consumers can use now to lower running costs and reduce their harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

There has been a marked trend in people moving away from gas guzzlers such as SUVs towards smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles. It is also no longer as ‘un-manly’ as it once was to drive slower.

More intriguing are notions that water can be mixed with gasoline to improve fuel efficiency by up to 60%. Data from Clickbank, a service that helps sell books and reports online, revealed that the fastest growing and (now) most popular online publisher in the last few months is Water4Gas. This site is run by entrepreneur Ozzie Freedom who says he has developed his system from old US patents that show a system of extracting HHO (2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen) from water (H20).

An electric current from the car battery is applied to the water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen elements. The hydrogen is then inserted into the fuel combustion chamber, where it enhances the combustion rate. Proponents of HHO, also known as Browns Gas, claim that it contains more energy than petrol, reduces harmful emissions (since the waste product is oxygen) and that it helps to ‘steam clean’ the engine.

There are no commercially available systems at this time, although many entrepreneurs are believed to be working on bringing those to market. Interested consumers today must buy online guides and then assemble the kits from generally available hardware. Water4Gas organizes weekly events in California to help show car and truck owners how to convert their vehicles and learn refinements from each other.

Although it is unclear if this is the beginning of a new growth industry, one thing is for sure; sky high oil prices will lead to a lot of innovation in the energy efficiency and renewable energy markets.