Because of the different possibilities to get combustion (example- sodium+water), a more-acurate bottleneck for a species would be “a chemistry & thermodynamics bottleneck”. The ability to exploit temperature differences and local elements. And there are many ways to do it… plasma, burning, oxidizing, fusion\fission\compress things, infrared radiation, other radiation types, etc.
Because of the different possibilities to get combustion (example- sodium+water), a more-acurate bottleneck for a species would be “a chemistry & thermodynamics bottleneck”. The ability to exploit temperature differences and local elements. And there are many ways to do it… plasma, burning, oxidizing, fusion\fission\compress things, infrared radiation, other radiation types, etc.