Slippery:
That is essentially one big mess of obfuscation and strawmen. It is pretty much a gish gallop so I'll just pick on a few points for now.
Flame front speeds have absolutely nothing to do with it. You simply CAN NOT burn the fuel "faster" to get more energy out of it.
Flame front speeds are very important for timing reasons. It's a basic. Google it and see what you get or check out a good textbook.
The second sentence is the strawman here. We all know you don't get more enrgy from the fuel if you burn it faster.
But you have to realise that in an engine, having got the heat into the fuel you then have convert it to work on the piston during the limited time available on the power stroke. This is where timing comes in.
I guess they missed that bit out when you were doing physics at uni
Completely disagree. [that pumping losses account for the difference between petrol and diesel efficiency] Are you telling me a gasoline engine uses 19% of it's energy (say, 30hp in a standard car) to suck the air in and blow it out? Hahaha, you've got to be joking.
No. 19% is your figure from the back of a fag packet. I'm telling you that pumping losses are a big part of the efficiency difference. Again google it and see what you get. And right in there is another error...
to suck the air in and blow it out? Hahaha, you've got to be joking
...the efficiency gain on the diesel is on the 'sucking in' side only, where the throttle is on a petrol engine. So laugh away - the joke's on you.
So what you are trying to tell me here that an engine which is effectively only compressing the air to 5x the atmospheric pressure rather than 10x, is still able to extract the same amount of energy per unit of fuel? Give me a break! If this were true, then high compression and low compression engines would have identical thermodynamic efficiency, and we wouldn't be discussing the differences between the two.
That part is pure obfuscation and you have gone full circle. At the very beginning:
1) I explained the importance of VE and 2. I explained why increased compression positively impacted on efficiency.
...that is where you came in with "volumetric efficiency has nothing to do with thermal efficiency".
I would say you've had an epiphany but you're actually just swapping between two positions.