AMBIO BIOFILTRATION LTD.
P.O. Box 1698
672 Henry Street west
Prescott, Ontario, K0E 1T0
Tel : 613-925-0686
Email : pride@ambio.ca
Email : shan@ambio.ca
Ambio Biofiltration Ltd., incorporated on January 14, 1993, is a Canadian company involved exclusively in odour control, and specializing in biofiltration. We were the first Canadian company to design and build biofilters as a major part of its work.
We design, build, and maintain biofilters for a wide range of
air pollution control applications, and offer consulting
services in the field. Our technology and
know-how
originally comes from Germany, where biofilters and
bioscrubbers have been in use for more than forty years.
The company is now a major player in the field throughout North America, and supports research in biofiltration at both Carleton University and the Unversity of Toronto.
Ambio has worked in a variety of applications in North America including wastewater treatment plants, food processing plants, organics processing facilities, and composting operations for odour control and on soil vapour extraction systems for BTEX control (see application list). We have specialized in wastewater treatment, composting and organics recycling applications.
Ambio usually works with local engineering firms on specific applications. At the lower air flows, up to about 2500 cfm, we use a modular type of construction, manufactured by us in Eastern Ontario and then moved to the site. For larger installations, the filter beds are usually built in situ using local contractors. Our installations include very low and very high air flows, from 300 to 60,000 cfm.
When the company first began operations in 1993, there were few
biofilters in North America, and very few that actually worked
up to the potential of the technology. The simplicity of the
underlying principles was taken to mean that anybody could
design and build biofilters. The result was that most of these
home-made
installations did not work well or at all, giving the technology
a poor reputation and making it difficult for serious players in
the field to sell the technology and their expertise. One of the
main problems, that still persists in the field today, was that
there was little transfer of practical design features from the
long European history in the field to North America when the
technology made the
jump
across the Atlantic. As a result, the same errors that were made
and corrected in Europe decades ago were repeated again in North
America; the
wheel
had to be re-invented here. Ambio’s links to the German
biofilter establishment meant that we started a good distance up
the learning curve; and hence, from the beginning, our
installations have performed well.
We believe that biofilters have three major advantages over competing odour control technologies:
- The underlying principles are known and straightforward;
- Capital and operating costs are always lower than competing technologies;
- A properly designed and commissioned biofilter is relatively easy to operate and maintain, with almost no moving parts, and manageable monitoring.
We have
bucked
the recent trend to so-called
structured
or
engineered
filter material. Although offering supposedly longer filter
life, these products are much more expensive, often more than 10
times the cost of Ambio filter material, require more
maintenance and nutrient monitoring, and generally take away
from the simplicity and
low-cost
nature of biofilter design and operation. The material we use
is, in fact,
structured
and
engineered
in the literal sense, although we always maintain a significant
organic component in all applications, as this material has
proven itself over the years to simply be the best filter
material. We also tailor the filter material to the application
and air stream.
Our systems are designed to be simple and virtually maintenance free, apart from greasing the fan bearings and changing the filter material every 5 years or so. We guarantee a filter life of 4 or 5 years, but depending on the application, it may be much longer. And this is not based on speculation or extrapolation, but on actual operating experience of over 15 years.
There are virtually no odours originating from the wastewater treatment environment that cannot be handled by a properly designed biofilter. Ambio systems tend to be smaller, lower cost per cfm of air, and with fewer maintenance requirements than any of our competitors.
We have made it a cornerstone of our business to provide after installation service and follow-up. No technology is fool-proof, especially biological systems. When upsets do occur, and this is rare, or issues arise relating to biofilter performance, we work with the staff of the installation to keep the biofilter running and deal with the issues as they arise, even long after warranties and service guarantees have expired. This can easily be verified by talking to the staff of our installations (references provided on request), and we urge you to do this.
Ambio has biofilters treating virtually every source of odours in the wastewater treatment environment, including sewer lines (Ottawa and Edmonton), pump stations (San Mateo, California), headworks and septage receiving (Kingston, Long Sault, Ontario, Friday Harbor, Washington), aeration basins (Long Sault, Cardinal, Ontario), biosolids storage tanks (Kingston, Ontario), biosolids treatment processes such as ATADs (McMinnville, Oregon, Princeton, Indiana, Long Sault, Ontario), sludge liming and drying operations (Sarnia, ON; Halifax, NS; Summerside, PEI) and a composting and organic recycling facility (Toronto, ON).