KING OF PRUSSIA, PA - Wood biofuel firm Renmatix will open a new headquarters plant in King of Prussia, PA, today. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett will speak during the grand opening of Renmatix at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 660 Allendale Road, King of Prussia.

The opening will follow a one-hour roundtable on biofuels hosted by John Doerr , a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an investor in Renmatix. Participating will be Paul Bryan, head of the U.S. Department of Energy's Biomass Program; John Melo, CEO of Amyris, renewable chemical and fuels company and recently named to the Renmatix board; and Vik Prabhu, DuPont's Industrial Biosciences strategy leader.

Renmatix says its proprietary Plantrose process produces the lowest cost biofuel from cellulosic sugar in wood and other plant materials, using supercritical hydrolysis, essentiually superheat steam.

The Plantrose process uses steam heated to a "supercritical" state to create cellulosic sugar from biomass. This process can reduce equipment size and reduce capital expense, and eliminates significant use of consumables such as enzymes used in other wood-to-biofuel conversions processes.

Renmatix says Plantrose technology also avoids low utilization rates of traditional enzymatic batch processing and recovery systems associated with acid hydrolysis methods.

Renmatix has been rapidly scaling up as it prepares to roll out the biofuel process for wood chips, wood waste, switch grass, corn cobs, and other biomass. In addition to naming Melo, CEO of Amyris, to its board (Melo began his career in energy markets at British Petroleum, where he most recently served as president of U.S. Fuels Operations), Renmatix appointed Ellen Purdy as the CFO.