Fowler WWTF

The Fowler Water Reclamation Facility is located in Cumming, GA. The plant is currently undergoing a major upgrade and expansion to include a new headworks facility, new EQ tank and pump station, addition of two MBR tanks and bioreactors, new plant drain pump station, new UV disinfection system, expansion of the blower area, new aerobic sludge storage facility, upgrades to chemical feed and storage system, new electrical buildings, and two new diesel generators.

Archer Western Construction Company contracted with SFI to provide the fully-automated instrumentation and control system for the plant upgrades. The plant control network consists of high-speed fiber optic fault-tolerant ring connecting the IT rack to 8 SFI-provided PLC panels and various other vendor control panels. The five main PLC panels are equipped with ControlLogix PLCs, fiber optic ring switch, and other ancillary devices to make a complete control panel. Two of the PLC panels are equipped with MicroLogix PLCs, fiber optic Ethernet switch, and other ancillary devices to make a complete control panel. One of the panels is equipped with remote IO, fiber optic Ethernet switch, and ancillary devices. Total physical I/O count across all four panels was over 925 points.

Control strategy involves chemical pacing, closed loop flow and level control view VFDs or modulating valves, and interfacing with a membrane filtration system. Other systems monitored and/or controlled include motors, valves, plant analytical instrumentation. Plant flows and equipment runtime are monitored and recorded in a historical database. The plant HMI system is based on Intellution iFix, running on redundant server class computers with two clients. The system also includes full reporting and remote web access for any internet-enabled devices. The total number of points in the HMI application was over 1,100 points across 31 SCADA screens. SFI will be working with the Suez MBR vendor to incorporate their HMI screens and database into the main SCADA application to provide a unified control system for the entire plant. SFI is performing 100% of the engineering, production, programming, start-up and configuration labor for this project.