About
Escarpment Renewables

The process of anaerobic digestion begins at pre-processing facilities, where Miller receives organic waste from municipal and IC&I sources, including fats, oils, and greases and food and beverage products that are expired, off-spec, returned, recalled, or past-date.

At the pre-processing facilities, organic waste is mechanically separated from its packaging and other contaminants, mixed with liquid to create a pumpable slurry, loaded into tanker trucks, and delivered to Escarpment Renewables.

At our facility, the slurry is pumped into digesters where, in the absence of oxygen, anaerobic micro-organisms break down the organic matter and release biogas, composed primarily of methane.

We harness and burn the gas in a combined heat and power generator and feed it to the Ontario electrical grid under the provincial renewable feed-in tariff program.

Anaerobic digestion also produces a liquid residue, which can be land-applied to local crops as a certified organic fertilizer. Rich in nutrients, liquid digestate also strengthens the structure of soil and helps it better retain moisture to prevent flooding and erosion. Part of Miller's redesign of the facility included the addition of pasteurization and skimming unit to remove contaminants from the digestate and kill pathogens to meet Canadian Food Inspection agency's requirements and have the digestate registered as a certified fertilizer for the local agricultural community, as required by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) to sell our digestate as fertilizer to the local agricultural community.