Dave said: Think of what we are trying to do here. We are burning the fuel..
With finer drops you have more surface area. As rpm goes up the drops have
to be finer or you will be passing a lot of unburned fuel through the
engine.
Elon: As I said earlier, if you are talking about gasoline, I agree with
you.
Dave: I think the amount of time you have to oxidize the fuel is most
important. You would want to optimize for BTU's released per unit of time
rather than most complete combustion or cleanest burn.
Elon: Precisely! But remember, I was talking about nitro and I "think"
droplet shape and size effects the efficiency of the energy transformation
for different materials. However it is not simple and sometimes it is not
intuitive as you infer. Not all materials react like gas. There is molecular
mean-free-path, molecule interactions, endothermic vs. exothermic reactions
..a whole lot of stuff but I don't have the data. To be fair and not bore
you I need to get more information. The next 3 days I'm AWOL but I will try
to bring some facts and not conjecture to this discussion. -Elon
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