When the wastewater treatment plant serving an industrial park in Cheatham County Tennessee had no way to know of knowing how their plant was performing without physically being there, HAWK Integrators implemented a complete SCADA system in just two months.
Treatment Facility
MBBR Wastewater Treatment Process
Businesses Served
Industrial park in Ashland City, TN
Prior SCADA
Operating without SCADA since commissioning in 2015.
Timeline
From notice to proceed to final completion.
The wastewater treatment plant at the Cheatham County industrial park had been operating since 2015 without a single piece of remote monitoring infrastructure. A 100,000-gallon-per-day MBBR facility serving 22 businesses, and its operator had no way to check on it without physically driving to the site.
Between required visits, the best available tool was a set of security cameras. No audio, no sensor data, no way of knowing what is truly going on and limited to whatever happened to be in frame. If a pump failed on a Friday afternoon, no one would know until Monday morning. A blower goes offline, backup power is activated, a float goes bad, and all of it invisible until boots were on the ground. Equipment failures could go entirely undetected for a full day or an entire weekend. There was no alarm infrastructure, no remote control, and no historical data of any kind.
The answer was not a full replacement. It was a precise, methodically planned retrofit. Rather than scrapping the existing panels, our team updated what needed to be updated and kept what was still serviceable. Such as the aging Allen Bradley MicroLogix 1400 PLC was replaced with an IDEC FC6A, the existing HMI was swapped out for a HAWK Advantech HMI, and a Peplink MAX BR1 cellular radio was installed to allow for communication back to HAWK Monitoring's private servers. Both the main treatment facility panel and the influent pump station panel were brought into a single unified system. By running additional wire from the pump station panel to the main panel, our team was able to create a direct connection between the two for the first time. The bar screen, alarm floats, and influent pumps at the pump station could now all be remotely monitored and the bar screen and two alarm floats could be remotely controlled from one place without the need for an additional PLC or cellular radio.
The Ignition powered system the operator received is Adenus Technologies' proprietary SCADA platform, HAWK Monitoring, which currently monitors over 470 treatment sites. But what makes this deployment specific to Cheatham County is everything built on top of it. Every line of PLC logic, the HMI screen, and every alarm was developed in-house and tailored to ensure this plant operates exactly as it should. Our configuration was driven by direct conversations and collaboration with the plant operator throughout the entire process. The centerpiece of this project is the custom 3D HMI screen built specifically for this MBBR system. Modeled to the actual site layout, it gives the operator a single view of the entire treatment process with equipment status and key data points visible right where they belong.
Our field team on site working at the main treatment facility control panel during installation.
The Result
The plant went from zero remote visibility to complete real-time operational awareness. The most immediate impact was alarm notifications: what used to go undetected until the operator’s next physical visit is now flagged the moment it happens, a direct reduction in the risk of compliance failures and equipment damage.
For the first time since commissioning, CCWWA administrators and the plant operator have continuous access to historical and real-time data. Flow totals, equipment runtimes, amperage readings, rainfall, all of it is available through hawkms.com from any device, at any time.
The full system now monitors and controls:
• Influent and effluent flow with daily and hourly totals
• Rainfall data from a newly installed Hydreon optical rain gauge
• Run conditions, run times, and amperage for all pumps, mixers, and blowers
• EQ float levels, chlorine pump status, and backup power status
• Remote control of the bar screen, four EQ pumps, two mixers, three blowers, and clarifier air pumps
• Full remote VFD control