3.1. Net energy, and greenhouse gas emissions
The NER results for the two different thermochemical processing
pathways and modeling scales are broken down by sub-process
and presented in Fig. 4. The importance of modeling industrialscale
is illustrated in the large difference in NER results for both
pathways. The NER for the HTL pathway and pyrolysis pathway
are improved by factors of 2.4 and 2.9, respectively, between the
small- and industrial-scale modeling efforts. The overall process
NER results from the industrial-scale system modeling for HTL
and pyrolysis pathways are 1.24 and 2.28, and represent energetically
unfavorable systems. In comparison with the NERs of other
energy fuels the WTP NERs for conventional diesel, corn ethanol,
and soy based biodiesel are 0.18, 1.07, and 0.80, respectively
[39,74].