Bedrock Automation boosts industrial control for Arkansas town's water and sewer system

March 28, 2016 – Bedrock Automation announced that the Russellville, Arkansas Water and Sewer System has replaced a legacy PLC with a secure Bedrock industrial control system.  Bedrock Certified Solution Provider Brown Engineers, of Little Rock, Arkansas, completed the upgrade in November of 2015 and the system has been performing to specifications ever since.

“The PLCs running automatic control of our digestion blowers, clarifiers, sludge pumps and chlorination chemical feed pumps have become obsolete. So when one of them failed, we wanted to replace it with something that would provide a path to the future.  With its high performance and increasingly important built-in cyber security protection, the Bedrock system offers that, and it has been running without issue since installed.  We are very pleased with the decision to go with Bedrock,” said Steve Mallett, Jr., P.E., General Manager of the City Corporation, which is responsible for the Arkansas pollution control facility.

Although it is performing essentially the same function as the legacy PLC, the Bedrock system is different from the legacy PLC. It uses an electromagnetic backplane instead of a traditional pin-based backplane. The electromagnetic backplane eliminates pin corrosion and breakage, which improves long term reliability and also enables embedded security by preventing the possibility of using counterfeit I/O modules. It also creates a galvanic isolation barrier between field wiring and the controller and provides a deterministic I/O update rate to support current functionality and additional planned expansions. The system is also different from the legacy PLCs in the following ways:

• The BedrockT system runs a military-grade safe and secure real-time operating system, further embedding security into the software and firmware used to control the facility.
• It can operate from 90-260VAC or DC power without fans or DIP switches and embeds standard, open system technologies including OPC UA, a fully compliant IEC61131-3 programming environment and standard Ethernet support at the control and I/O networks.
• The Bedrock control system consists of only a dozen part numbers.
• The system is scalable for more advanced control functions, such as serving as a SCADA Remote Transfer Unit (RTU) or distributed control system (DCS).

"We are seeing increased interest in cyber security among municipal utility clients such as City Corporation.  Many want to control security functions from their tablets and control centers, because their networks are getting hammered every day by probes and attempted intrusions.  The Bedrock controller gives them another layer of protection beyond firewalls and VPNs. It is unique in that as it powers up, it checks to be sure that all hardware and software components are validated. Regular PLCs just can’t do that," said Dee Brown, PE of Brown Engineers.

The Bedrock controller is part of an integrated plantwide SCADA system. Users connect to that system via Ignition software from Inductive Automation. Ignition is an industrial applications platform that coordinates control and data acquisition for all plant PLCs and remote transfer units (RTUs).

About Bedrock Automation

Bedrock Automation, based in San Jose, California, is the maker of Bedrock, a cyber secure automation platform.  From Silicon Valley, Bedrock Automation has assembled the latest technologies and talents in both the automation and semiconductor industries to build an unprecedented automation solution for industrial control based on three prime directives:  Simplicity, Scalability and Security.  

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