THE idea of running a car engine on water may seem like something straight out of science fiction. But scientifically, the idea is not without merits.

The quest to prove its feasibility started when it was discovered that running a current of electricity through a test tube of water could turn the liquid into pure hydrogen and oxygen gas, the combustible elements that make up water.

Fuelling the international drive to harness the highly combustible chemical properties of ordinary water is the growing realisation that the $3 trillion dollar (£1.91 trillion) a year global oil industry is sitting on a resource time bomb.

With global oil consumption increasing by over 10 per cent a year, existing oil fields drying up and the rate of newly discovered fields dramatically slowing down, the spectre of an energy famine is looming.

But the process of turning water into a cheap abundant energy supply has been a non starter up to now because of the enormous amounts of electrical energy required for the process.

All this could now be set to change doe to the pioneering work of Belfast born electrical engineer, Mr Richard Coakley (63).

He has taken out US patents on a number of systems that can turn water into infinite quantities of high grade fuel at little or no cost.

The revolutionary process the Los Angeles based engineer is calling Electro Gaseous Separation Technology, will enable cars and other internal combustion engines to run on water.

Later this year the inventor will unveil a working model of the engine. The alternate fuel system works by sending pulsed high frequency electromagnetic radiation across water vapour that has been heated to 1800C.

The process disrupts the electrical charge that holds the water's component atoms together. In the reaction highly combustible gas is produced.

But the initial engines will be expensive, owing to the fact that they have to be made out of expensive heat resistant carbon fibre and ceramic materials to withstand the heat generated.

The considerable upside is that for the mere cost of a unit of electricity (11p), enough fuel is produced from a gallon of water to propel a standard saloon car 60 miles.

There is the added benefit of no exhaust emissions from the engine, because there are no hydrocarbons or poisonous heavy byproducts present in the source fuel - water.

Water fuel conversion technology is currently dominated by Professor Stan Meyer, a Colombus, Ohio based inventor who has pioneered research into the technology over the last years. His research is protected by 30 US and 18 worldwide patents.

He has substantial funding from a US government eager to exploit the newly emerging energy source.

Mr Coakley's Hydrofuel Technology Inc is confident that the engine technology the firm is developing will prove viable in the long term once it becomes acceptable as an alternative.

In recent months his firm completed construction on a desalination plant in Kuwait using the electrogaseous separation technology.

Using a modified version of the engine operated in reverse, sea water is converted into its component gases by a form of electrical distillation which later recombines the gases back into fresh drinking water minus the salt.