Ottawa firm designs eco-friendly ice resurfacing know-how

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Even after 30 years of working in arenas with the Metropolis of Ottawa, Ron Albert was all the time amazed by the mountains of snow discarded exterior of the rinks by the Zambonis.

“After we went exterior to dump the snow, I saved considering, ‘Why are we dumping this? Snow turns into water. Why would we be losing that?’” he mentioned.

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As prices for water, electrical energy, fuel and arranged sports activities elevated, Albert was impressed to design one thing that might recycle the 700 litres of water it takes to flood an ice rink slightly than throwing it away.

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Conceptualizing designs for an eco-friendly ice resurfacing resolution turned his ardour undertaking. He would spend hours at his kitchen desk engaged on the retrofit designs and bouncing concepts off his mates.

Over the previous 10 years, his firm, GREINS Environmental Applied sciences, has designed and patented the primary retrofit know-how that may be put in on any ice resurfacing machine, together with Zambonis, that recycles ice shavings by means of reheating and filtering processes as an alternative of discarding them exterior.

Whereas “Zamboni” has grow to be the widespread hockey time period, Albert normally finally ends up correcting individuals who use the time period about his product.

“Zamboni is only a model identify like Kleenex,” he mentioned. “Our patent is not only for Zambonis. It covers all resurfacing machines.”

Alongside his colleagues at GREINS — an acronym for Inexperienced Renewable Power Ice N’ Snow — Albert just lately struck a deal on the TV present Dragons’ Den as the corporate prepares to commercialize the product and start gross sales.

Albert’s pitch projected that the know-how would save roughly 8 million litres of water per yr for a two-pad facility, equating to 1000’s in annual hydro financial savings.

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Whereas understanding of his firm’s storage in Chesterville, Ont., a village southeast of Ottawa, the workforce went by means of a number of designs earlier than arriving on the ultimate product.

Albert mentioned the previous 10 years have been a take a look at of resilience for him and his workforce. “The primary product was not melting the snow quick sufficient, we needed to attempt various things like totally different pipe beams.

“My dad all the time taught me to by no means hand over — there’s all the time a method to do one thing, and also you simply must determine it out and discover a manner that works.”

Albert spent nearly all of his childhood surrounded by engines and machines. His father was a machinist and taught him how you can take issues aside and put them again collectively once more. “I really like working with my fingers, and I’ve all the time been good at it,” Albert mentioned.

For the reason that present aired, he mentioned the newfound neighborhood fame has been “one thing to get used to.”

He mentioned individuals at the moment are recognizing him at Tim Hortons and are stopping to thank him for placing the neighborhood on the map.

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