Lined Pipe in Montana

Montana's process industry is small in plant count and big in chemistry: four refineries that together run about 205,000 barrels a day, a renewable diesel and jet fuel plant on the Missouri at Great Falls, the copper and molybdenum operation at Butte with its lime treatment of Berkeley Pit water, the only platinum and palladium mines in the country and the smelter and base metals refinery that serves them at Columbus, plus coal power at Colstrip and a beet sugar factory at Billings. Marspec Technical Products fabricates the plastic-lined pipe spools and supplies the lined fittings and valves those plants use for acid, caustic, amine and brine, with spools shipped from Fairhope, Alabama.

If you have a corroding line in Billings, Butte, Great Falls or Columbus, call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online and we will quote a lined replacement to your drawing.

Refining on the Yellowstone and the Missouri

Three refineries sit within a few miles of each other in Yellowstone County, at Laurel, Billings and Lockwood, each rated near 60,000 barrels a day, and refining makes up well over half of Montana's manufacturing sector. The fourth refinery, at Great Falls, has operated since 1922 and now shares its site with a renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel unit that runs on canola oil, tallow, camelina and used cooking oil. The corrosive streams in these plants are the same ones we supply lined pipe for everywhere: alkylation acid and spent acid, caustic treating and spent caustic, rich and lean amine, sour water, demineralizer regenerants and cooling water chemicals. A renewable diesel pretreatment train adds acid degumming and caustic neutralization of the feed oil, which is wet, acidic and hard on carbon steel. PTFE-lined spools and PFA-lined plug valves hold up in all of it and eliminate the alloy pipe that would otherwise be required.

Mining and metallurgy from Butte to Columbus

Butte's Continental Pit feeds a flotation concentrator that moves roughly 45,000 tons of ore a day and produces copper and molybdenum concentrates. Flotation reagents and the acidic, metal-laden water pumped from the Berkeley Pit, which is treated in a two-stage lime precipitation plant before polishing and discharge, are hard duty for unprotected steel. In the Beartooth foothills, the Stillwater mine near Nye and the East Boulder mine near Big Timber work the J-M Reef, and their concentrates go to Columbus, where a smelter and base metals refinery leach copper and nickel out of the matte and recover platinum group metals from both mined concentrate and recycled catalytic converters. Acid leach circuits, bleed streams and reagent lines in a refinery like that are textbook applications for PTFE and PVDF liners, which resist the acid, do not contaminate the metal values and avoid the cost of high-nickel alloys. Butte also hosts a silicon gas plant built on chlorosilane chemistry, where hydrogen chloride and chlorosilanes call for fluoropolymer-lined piping, in vented housings because HCl permeates the liner.

Coal power, sugar, talc and water

The Colstrip generating station in Rosebud County scrubs its flue gas with wet scrubbers, which means limestone or lime slurry, acidic scrubber blowdown and chloride-rich wastewater, and its boiler feedwater plant regenerates ion exchange beds with sulfuric acid and caustic. The beet sugar factory in Billings handles milk of lime, carbonation gas, sulfur dioxide and heavy clean-in-place chemistry every campaign. Talc mined in the Ruby and Gravelly ranges is milled near Three Forks, Dillon and Sappington. Municipal water plants in Billings, Missoula, Great Falls and Bozeman dose sodium hypochlorite, ferric chloride and fluoride through lines that corrode quickly in anything but plastic or lined steel.

Lined piping we build for Montana plants

We fabricate custom lined spools in 1/2" through 12" diameters and lengths up to 20 ft, lined with PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene, in carbon steel or 304 and 316 stainless housings. Flanged elbows, tees, reducers, laterals and instrument tees are part of our lined pipe and fittings line and conform dimensionally to ANSI B16.5, so they bolt to the flanged runs already in your plant.

• Lined ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling valves in PTFE and PFA
• Lined strainers, expansion joints, spacers, spectacle blinds and sight glasses
• Solid PTFE pipe and other products for small-bore and high-purity service
• Clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound for cold-weather lines

Montana winters are as hard on process lines as any in the country. Caustic at 50 percent freezes well above the temperature of an outdoor rack in Butte or Great Falls, lime slurry settles and plugs when flow stops, and sulfuric acid grows viscous. Our temperature maintenance products are sized to the liner, so a traced or steam-heated lined line stays fluid without cooking the plastic.

Standards you can cite in the spec

Our lined pipe and fittings comply with ASTM F1545. Lined fittings are welded to ASME B31.3 by welders certified to ASME Section IX. Every lined pipe spool and fitting gets a minimum 10,000-volt spark test before it leaves Fairhope, and we have more than half a century of experience in the plastic-lined piping industry behind every quote. Liner selection charts, vacuum and temperature ratings and bolt torque tables are on our technical details page.

Serving Billings, Great Falls, Butte and the rest of Montana

We ship custom spools nationwide from Fairhope, Alabama, built to order for plants in Billings, Laurel, Great Falls, Butte, Columbus, Colstrip, Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, Kalispell and Sidney. Call (251) 625-4949, or contact us online with your line list.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Montana

Can you line pipe for the acid leach circuit at a PGM or copper refinery in Montana?

Yes. PTFE and PVDF liners resist sulfuric and hydrochloric acid leach solutions across the concentrations used in base metals refining, and the lined steel housing gives you a flanged, pressure-rated line that will not contaminate the metal stream.

Which liner is typical for spent caustic and amine service at a refinery like those around Billings?

PTFE is the usual choice because it is indifferent to caustic at any strength and to amine solutions, and it covers the temperature range of those units. We can supply the same spools in polypropylene where the service allows and a specification calls for it; PVDF is not used on caustic or amines.

Will a lined line hold up outdoors through a Butte or Great Falls winter?

The liner is fine in the cold; the problem is the fluid. We supply clamp-on steam heaters, electric heat tracing and heat-transfer compound matched to the liner's temperature limit so caustic and acid lines keep flowing.

Do you supply lined pipe for scrubber slurry and blowdown at a coal plant like Colstrip?

We supply lined pipe, lined diaphragm valves and lined strainers for acidic scrubber blowdown and chloride-rich wastewater in flue gas desulfurization service, in carbon steel or stainless housings, with PVDF within velocity limits where solids are present; rubber lining is the usual answer for the limestone slurry itself.