Lined Pipe in Houston, TX

Nobody has to explain the Houston Ship Channel to a Houston maintenance planner. From the turning basin past Pasadena, Deer Park and Channelview to Baytown and La Porte, down the bay to Texas City and south to Freeport, the corridor holds the second-largest petrochemical complex in the world and more than two million barrels a day of refining. Marspec Technical Products fabricates PTFE-, PVDF- and polypropylene-lined pipe spools and supplies the lined fittings and valves for the acid, caustic, chlorine and brine lines inside it. Call (251) 625-4949 to put a spool package on our schedule.

We have lined steel pipe for more than half a century at our shop in Fairhope, Alabama, a Gulf Coast neighbor that ships nationwide. To get started, contact us online with isometrics or a valve list.

The corridor, segment by segment

Pasadena, Deer Park and Channelview

The upper channel is refining and olefins. The Deer Park refinery runs about 318,000 barrels a day beside a chemical complex, Pasadena has a smaller refinery and a 625,000-ton-a-year bimodal polyethylene unit fed by a Port Arthur cracker, and Channelview is one of the largest olefins sites in the country, with two steam crackers, propylene oxide and styrene monomer, and a methanol plant feeding the acetyls chain. Alkylation sulfuric acid, spent caustic, sour water, amine, cracker caustic wash and quench water all include lines that run better in lined pipe than in carbon steel. The refinery at the head of the channel shut in early 2025 for conversion to a chemical site.

Baytown and Mont Belvieu

Across the Fred Hartman Bridge, the Baytown complex pairs the fifth-largest refinery in the country, about 565,000 barrels a day, with an olefins plant, a chemical plant and a polyethylene plant at Mont Belvieu in Chambers County. Mont Belvieu itself is the NGL hub of North America, with two fractionation complexes that will each handle more than a million barrels a day once their newest trains are running. Baytown also hosts an isocyanate complex where chlorine becomes phosgene, then MDI and TDI, and leaves as hydrochloric acid. Chlorine, HCl, caustic scrubbers and the amine and caustic treating at the fractionators are PTFE-lined territory, with vented housings on the chlorine and HCl lines because both permeate the liner.

La Porte, Bayport and Texas City

La Porte holds the Battleground chlor-alkali plant, now in a $1.1 billion conversion and expansion, with PVC and acetyls units nearby. The Bayport Industrial District between Pasadena, La Porte and Seabrook packs more than 60 chemical plants into one district: acetic acid and vinyl acetate at Clear Lake, acrylic acid and acrylates, ethylene oxide, propylene oxide and hydrogen. Down the bay, the Galveston Bay refinery at Texas City is the second largest in the United States at 631,000 barrels a day, beside a second refinery and a chemical site making aldehydes, organic acids and vinyl acetate. The media list here reads like a lined-pipe catalog: brine, wet chlorine, 50 percent caustic, hypochlorite, hydrochloric and acetic acid, the iodide catalyst of the acetyls process, and acrylic acid.

Freeport and Brazosport

Brazoria County's Brazosport cluster is anchored by the largest integrated chemical manufacturing site in the Western Hemisphere at Freeport, which has made chlorine and caustic from brine since 1940, added a 1.5-million-ton ethylene unit in 2017 and is bringing a seventh polyethylene unit on line. A second chlor-alkali producer at Freeport supplies chlorine to the chlorohydrin propylene oxide unit there, and Freeport LNG exports from Quintana. Chlorohydrin PO means hypochlorous acid and calcium chloride brine, the salt domes mean raw and treated brine, and all of it is why lined pipe is the local default.

Houston's water systems are industrial-scale too. The Northeast Water Purification Plant expansion took the plant from 80 to 400 million gallons a day for the city and four regional water authorities, and a plant that size doses sodium hypochlorite, coagulant, acid or caustic for pH, and fluoride through chemical feed piping that belongs in lined spools and lined diaphragm valves.

What we supply along the channel

Custom lined pipe spools and lined fittings, 1/2" through 12", with PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene liners in carbon steel or 304 and 316 stainless housings, built to your isometrics in lengths up to 20 ft. Elbows, tees, reducers and laterals come lined to match.

• PTFE-lined ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling valves, sized to the pipe
• Lined strainers, expansion joints, PTFE spacers and spectacle blinds, sight glasses and solid PTFE pipe
• Clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound for lined lines
• Vessel accessories for lined systems

Houston rarely freezes, but 50 percent caustic crystallizes in the mid 50s F, 73 percent caustic solidifies far above that, and glacial acetic acid freezes at 62 °F. Clamp-on steam heaters or electric tracing on a lined spool keep those lines moving through a January norther without a jacketed pipe.

Standards your spec will recognize

Our lined pipe and fittings comply with ASTM F1545. Fittings conform dimensionally to ANSI B16.5 and are welded to ASME B31.3 by welders certified to ASME Section IX, and every lined pipe spool and fitting is spark tested at a minimum of 10,000 volts. Ratings by liner and size are on our technical details page.

From the turning basin to Freeport

We ship lined piping to Houston, Pasadena, Deer Park, Channelview, Baytown, Mont Belvieu, La Porte, Texas City, Alvin, Freeport, Lake Jackson and Sweeny. For a replacement spool, a lined valve package or a full turnaround order, call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Houston, TX

Can you support a turnaround on the Houston Ship Channel with spools built to our isometrics?

Yes. Send the spool list and isometrics once scope is set and we fabricate, spark test and ship the package from Fairhope ahead of the window, then build replacements for the spools that are found corroded after the unit is opened.

Our chlor-alkali unit in La Porte has flanged lined pipe from several makers. Will yours bolt up?

It will. Lined pipe and fittings built to ASTM F1545 with ANSI B16.5 flange dimensions are interchangeable at the flange, so our PTFE-lined spools and plug valves fit the existing brine, chlorine and caustic headers without adapters.

What liner do you recommend for the acetic acid and acrylate services in the Bayport district?

PTFE for glacial acetic acid at process temperature, for any stream carrying the iodide catalyst, and for the dilute acid and caustic lines at lower temperatures as well, with PVDF an option on the cooler dilute acid. We confirm the choice against concentration and temperature before quoting.

Do you supply lined pipe to Houston-area water and wastewater plants?

We do. Sodium hypochlorite, ferric and alum coagulants, sulfuric acid, caustic and fluoride feed lines at treatment plants are a good fit for PTFE-lined spools with lined diaphragm or ball valves; polypropylene-lined spools are available for the coagulant, caustic and fluoride lines where a specification calls for them, never for hypochlorite.