Straying slightly on this one.
Re: A better diesel engine
But it doesn't really matter.
I will just bring you into the real world, without piddling on your shoes too much.
If you can think of an idea that gives just 0.01% efficiency increase, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone has already thought of it and slapped a patent on it. Awaiting the day someone comes along with some similar idea and starts to market it.
Then you get a letter from some slimy corporate lawyer stating that if you don't pay the patent holder X squillion bucks, they will drag you thru every court in the land and make sure you end end up hanging yourself thru frustration.
Unless you aim for improving very modern technology, you can almost guarantee anything to do with old technology has already been thought of and covered.
You maybe hoped that by throwing ideas around, you would come up with an easy solution. It doesn't work like that in most cases. Homework is the key to anything like this, hours upon hours of frustrating research, followed by heartache when you find something the same or very similar has been done before. If you do find a small niche, you have got to keep your mouth shut and share it with no-one, not even the dog. Only releasing the results when you have it proved and covered by the legalities of a patent. Even then, unless you have squillions in cash to fight legal battles, you can find your ideas stolen and into production before you can even get someone interested in your design. By the time the robbers have been tracked down, they have made their bucks and disappeared into the night.
I worked for a small American company for a few very unhappy years, and as usual, they had you covered under contract, that any ideas you came up with while working in their factory, became their property. I had to catalogue everything I did to the machinery in there, and the boss would check my workbook each weekend. I am sure he patented a lot of the ideas I had come up with to get his machinery running more efficiently. His office wall was covered in metal plaques, engraved with all sorts of patented ideas. If I had took the time to look closely, I am sure a lot of them would have been mine, as the wall started to fill up with each passing month.
It is great having discussions of this type on here, but you take the time to reflect, unless you are the one in a billion, you just will not be able to realise your dreams of ever getting anything truly inventive into the marketplace.
Just resign yourself to helping out a few modellers who take the time to read your ramblings.
I made that decision a few years ago, and it gives me great enjoyment and satisfaction seeing one of my ideas being used. When I see someone post, 'I pinched this idea from a chap called Bogs', you know you have been recognised as someone who has helped others along their way.
Bogs