When you think about steam power it conjures up all sorts of nostalgic images and sounds of a bygone industrial age when huge steam locomotives pounded the rails, and massive ocean going liners ruled the waves, iron horses billowing out plumes of smoke and tons of thick, black soot.

Fast forward to the energy-crisis 2.0 that we have today and the notion of a return to steam power seems utterly ridiculous, especially with regard to the levels of air pollution.

But hold on a minute, if you think about it, the actual idea of using pressurized steam it is still an incredibly powerful source of energy and one that maybe an option as we look to reduce the amount of oil that we use and more accurately, waste.

Clean Power Technologies a company from Newhaven in England is developing ways to make the internal combustion engine more efficient by creating steam hybrid engines. The target is to reclaim, or extend the vast amounts of heat energy currently lost in a traditional combustion engine.

According to the company's research, only 27 percent of the energy from a tank of gas is actually used for propelling the vehicle forward, 33 percent is used to cool the engine, 36 percent is just lost through heat via the exhaust and a mere 4 percent is lost to friction. So basically we have been throwing energy away, because until now we have had the luxury to do so, well times have changed.

Clean Power Technologies aims to capture 40 percent of the lost heat energy convert it into steam and reuse it to provide additional power to the engine and to other power draining components.

The company has developed a system whereby the heat produced from the exhaust system of a truck passes through a steam accumulator which amounts to a sealed tank of water that boils creating incredible pressure which can then subsequently be converted into useful power. Something not too dissimilar, in concept anyway, to Thomas Newcomen's original steam engine of 1712.

Eventually the company plans to run the steam back into the engine block to run some of the pistons, but in the meantime the power being harnessed is being used to run a refrigeration system for big container trucks. The company is currently building a prototype diesel truck which should be ready by October.

The company has garnered interest from Safeway, here in the US as well as the Canadian haulage firm East-West Express Transportation. Each Safeway truck currently burns between $10,000 to $15,000 in diesel a year just to power the containers refrigeration unit.

The company plans to have a steam-gasoline hybrid car engine by 2011. Though steam-power is not a new idea, it maybe time to revisit an old friend especially with the cost of oil moving ever upwards. At least the initial investment cost of making the changes in re-tooling engine technology are no longer that prohibitive, given the current circumstances.

All aboard!