Lined Pipe in Louisville, KY

Louisville's chemistry started in 1941, when the government put a neoprene plant and a calcium carbide and acetylene plant on the Ohio River west of town, then added a styrene-butadiene plant fed with butadiene made from the city's own distillery alcohol. The district is still called Rubbertown, it still holds about eleven large chemical plants, and the fluorochemical, acrylic, resin and rubber lines inside them are what plastic-lined pipe was made for. Marspec Technical Products fabricates that pipe and supplies the lined fittings and valves, with spools shipping from Fairhope, Alabama. Call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online.

We have spent more than half a century in plastic-lined piping. This page covers the Louisville metro on both banks of the river and the plants upstream.

Rubbertown, plant by plant

Along Bells Lane and Campground Road the lineup today reads: two synthetic rubber plants, one for styrene-butadiene and one for specialty elastomers; the fluorochemical works on the old neoprene site, where HCFC-22 is made from chloroform and anhydrous hydrogen fluoride as feedstock for fluoropolymers; an acrylic monomer and resin plant on the old butadiene site, with an acrylic sheet operation beside it; a formaldehyde and phenolic resin plant dating to 1979; a polymer additive plant; a calcium carbide furnace; an aluminum pigment plant; and five petroleum terminals on the old refinery sites. The PVC plant that once made vinyl chloride from carbide acetylene is gone. The media list is long: HF and HCl, chloroform and chlorinated by-products, sulfuric acid, caustic, formaldehyde, phenol, acrylic acid and its esters, styrene and butadiene, hydrocarbon solvents, and the acid and caustic wastewater that heads to the Morris Forman plant next door. Aqueous HF, wet HCl and hot caustic are three services where carbon steel fails and nickel alloys get expensive, and where PTFE-lined spools with PFA-lined ball and plug valves are the standard answer, with heavy-wall liners and vented housings on the HF and HCl lines because both permeate PTFE; the anhydrous HF feedstock itself runs in carbon steel.

Terminals, Clark County and the river upstream

Riverport and the Ohio River terminals

Louisville Riverport covers about 300 acres at mile 618 and is built for more than four million tons a year of dry bulk, unloading 120-car unit trains of coal, grain, fertilizer and potash to barge. The Rubbertown terminals move gasoline, distillate and ethanol with the additive and tank-cleaning chemistry that goes with them.

Across the river in Clark County

The Port of Indiana at Jeffersonville is a steel-processing district: hot-rolled coil pickling, wire and bar pickling and coating, galvanizing and painting of cold-rolled sheet, slitting and blanking, plus an industrial ammonia plant, a liquid products terminal and lubricant blending. Hydrochloric pickle liquor, rinse water, passivation baths and acid regeneration are PTFE- and PVDF-lined pipe service, with polypropylene available where a specification calls for it, only below about 150 F on HCl and never on nitric passivation baths. River Ridge at Charlestown, on the old Army ammunition plant, is filling with new industry.

Carrollton and Ghent

Fifty miles upriver, a 1,200-acre silicones plant at Carrollton has made siloxanes since 1967 and now shares a fence with a fumed silica plant, chemistry that runs on chlorosilanes, methanol and hydrochloric acid. At Ghent, the largest fully integrated stainless producer in the country runs its melt shop, rolling mills and annealing and pickling lines on 1,600 acres, with a flat-rolled carbon sheet mill next door. Stainless pickling means mixed nitric and hydrofluoric acid at temperature, and PTFE is the only liner we offer for it.

Bourbon, water and wastewater

Kentucky has a record 16.1 million barrels of bourbon aging, and Louisville's share is distilled and warehoused in Shively along Dixie Highway, at the Bernheim distillery at 17th and Lexington, at Stitzel-Weller and at the newer distilleries downtown. The corrosive side of bourbon is clean-in-place: hot caustic and acid cycles through mash cooler, fermenters and still, then stillage leaving the beer still near boiling at a pH around 4, high in solids and organic acids. Lined pipe and lined diaphragm valves carry both without pitting. The water company draws from the Ohio at Crescent Hill and through a mile-and-a-half riverbank filtration tunnel 150 ft down that feeds the B.E. Payne plant, and the Morris Forman plant in Rubbertown, Kentucky's largest wastewater plant, treats 120 million gallons a day in dry weather and up to 350 in storms with high-purity oxygen activated sludge, sodium hypochlorite and bisulfite dechlorination.

Lined pipe, valves and heat for the Ohio Valley

We fabricate custom lined pipe spools and supply lined fittings, 1/2" through 12", in PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene with carbon steel or 304/316 stainless housings, in lengths up to 20 ft, matched to the flange drilling and face-to-face of what is already in the rack. Our lined valves include PTFE- and PFA-lined ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling valves. Our accessories include lined strainers, expansion joints, spacers, spectacle blinds, sight glasses and solid PTFE pipe. An Ohio River pipe rack in January will drop formaldehyde out as paraformaldehyde, crystallize 50 percent caustic and thicken acrylic monomer, so clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound go on most outdoor lined lines we ship to Louisville.

Shipped from Fairhope to the Falls of the Ohio

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. Liner ratings are on our technical details page. We serve Louisville, Rubbertown, Shively, Riverport, Jeffersontown, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany, Charlestown, Carrollton and Ghent. Call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online for custom spools and lined valves.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Louisville, KY

Which liner do you recommend for hydrogen fluoride and HCl at a Rubbertown fluorochemical plant?

PTFE in carbon steel housings, with PFA-lined ball or plug valves, for the aqueous acid and scrubber side; anhydrous HF itself runs in carbon steel. Aqueous HF attacks glass, stainless and most alloys; PTFE is not attacked, but HF and HCl permeate it, so we build those spools with heavy-wall liners and vented housings, and the steel housing carries the pressure. Every lined pipe spool and fitting we ship is spark tested at a minimum of 10,000 volts, because a pinhole in HF service is not forgivable.

We run hydrochloric acid pickling at the Port of Indiana in Jeffersonville. Which liner fits?

PTFE for the whole circuit, from pickle liquor and rinse at bath temperature to the acid regeneration and fume-scrubber side where the acid is hotter and the chloride more concentrated; PVDF also suits the pickle and rinse lines, and polypropylene is available there below about 150 F where a specification calls for it, because permeation derates it in hot HCl. Lined plug valves tolerate the iron chloride scale better than ball valves.

Our Rubbertown plant has a flanged PTFE-lined system from another fabricator. Will your spools match it?

Yes. Lined systems share ANSI B16.5 flange drilling, so send the face-to-face lengths, flange class and liner type and we supply replacement spools and fittings to those dimensions. They bolt up during the shutdown without moving anything else.

What do you need to quote a turnaround spool package for a Louisville plant?

Isometrics or a line list with sizes, flange class, face-to-face lengths, liner, media and temperature. Send it through the contact page or call (251) 625-4949 and we quote spools, fittings, valves and accessories together, with spools shipping from Fairhope, Alabama.