Lined Pipe in Pascagoula, MS

Pascagoula is a one-industry town with several industries in it: a 369,000-barrel-a-day refinery with twenty major process units on Bayou Casotte, the largest shipyard on the Gulf, two deepwater harbors, an LNG terminal and a thousand-acre phosphate fertilizer site in the middle of a federal cleanup. All of it runs on acid, caustic, amine, hypochlorite and sour water. Marspec Technical Products fabricates plastic-lined pipe spools and supplies the lined fittings and valves for that service and ships it from Fairhope, Alabama, one state line east. Call 251-625-4949 to start a quote.

Marspec has been lining steel pipe with PTFE, PVDF and polypropylene for more than fifty years. Contact us online with isometrics, a line list or a photograph of what failed.

Bayou Casotte: the refinery and its neighbors

The refinery is the center of gravity. Besides fuels it makes premium base oils in a lube plant completed in 2014, benzene from an aromatics unit that a chemical company owns and refinery crews operate, propylene, sulfur and petroleum coke, and it moves product through about 200 tanks holding 600 million gallons and four marine terminals with seven berths. A plant that size has lined pipe in more places than most people expect:

• Alkylation: fresh and spent acid transfer, acid-settler drains and the caustic and water wash on the alkylate side
• Caustic treating and spent caustic: merox and prewash units, spent caustic to the wastewater plant, 50 percent caustic unloading
• Sour water and amine: stripper bottoms, rich amine with dissolved H2S and CO2, and ammonia-laden overheads
• Sulfur recovery and the tail gas unit: acidic condensate, quench water, SO2 scrubbing
• Chemical unloading racks and the wastewater plant: sulfuric acid, ferric chloride, polymer, hypochlorite and the cooling-tower biocide feeds

The rest of the Bayou Casotte Industrial Park reflects a corridor in transition. The nitrobenzene and aniline plant and the phosphate fertilizer complex are gone, but the fertilizer site left roughly 700 million gallons of acidic process water behind its gypsum stacks. A federal cleanup has neutralized more than five billion gallons since 2017, treats about 1.5 million gallons a day, and is scheduled to finish by the end of 2028, while a liquid bulk terminal operator has broken ground on the redeveloped front of the property. Lime slurry, acidic gypsum-stack water and the terminal's acid and caustic lines are PTFE- and PVDF-lined service. Add the LNG terminal's amine and demineralized water systems, and the public terminals E through H that handle chemicals and petroleum products.

Shipyards on the Pascagoula River

The naval shipyard on the river harbor employs more than 11,000 people, the largest manufacturing workforce in Mississippi, and builds four classes of Navy ships at the same time. Across the river in Moss Point and Escatawpa a second yard builds cutters and specialty vessels. A shipyard's lined-pipe needs are in the shops rather than the hulls: blast and paint waste streams, chromate and zinc phosphate pretreatment lines, acid pickling and passivation of stainless and copper-nickel pipe, electroplating, and the industrial wastewater plant that collects all of it. Lined plug valves and PTFE-lined spools outlast rubber-lined pipe in those shops and can be opened, inspected and reused.

Moss Point and the Escatawpa corridor

Moss Point is the county's service base, with pipe, valve and fitting distributors, turnaround contractors, heat-treating and portable-machining shops along Highway 90 and Highway 63 that support the refinery and the yards. The fossil power station on the Escatawpa River runs condensate polishing, demineralizer regeneration and cooling-tower chemistry on sulfuric acid, caustic and hypochlorite. Fish-oil and fish-meal processing on the Gulf side uses caustic refining and CIP acids, and the Jackson County utility authority feeds sodium hypochlorite and ferric sulfate at its water and wastewater plants.

Spools, valves and accessories for Jackson County

We fabricate custom lined pipe spools and supply lined fittings from 1/2" through 12", up to 20 ft, in carbon steel or 304 and 316 stainless housings, lined with PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene to suit the fluid and temperature. Elbows, tees, reducers, laterals and instrument tees are available lined, and we build to the flange standard already in your unit so turnaround spools bolt up without rework.

Lined valves cover ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling types. For spent alkylation acid and wet H2S service, PTFE-lined plug and ball valves; for hypochlorite and caustic feed, lined diaphragm valves; for sampling spent caustic, lined sampling valves that close dead-tight. Accessories include lined strainers, expansion joints, PTFE spacers and spectacle blinds for isolation, sight glasses and solid PTFE pipe. Where 50 percent caustic or heavy amine sits in an outdoor rack through a cold snap, we supply clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound from our temperature maintenance line.

Built to the standards refinery specs call for

Our lined products 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. Every lined item gets a spark test at a minimum of 10,000 volts before shipment. Liner ratings for pressure, full vacuum and temperature are on our technical details page.

Serving Pascagoula, Moss Point and the Mississippi coast

We ship to Pascagoula, Moss Point, Escatawpa, Gautier, Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport and Lucedale from Fairhope, Alabama, with custom spools fabricated for turnarounds and replacement work. Call 251-625-4949 or contact us online with your drawings.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Pascagoula, MS

Can you support a turnaround at the Bayou Casotte refinery with replacement lined spools?

Yes. Send the isometrics or the tag list for the spools being replaced, with flange standard and liner type, and we supply them to the same dimensions so they bolt in during the outage. Custom spools built to field dimensions are what the Fairhope shop is set up for.

What liner handles spent alkylation acid and sour water in a Pascagoula refinery unit?

PTFE-lined pipe and PTFE-lined plug or ball valves are the usual choice for spent acid, sour water and rich amine. PVDF is an option for cleaner acid streams below its temperature limit, and both avoid the alloy upgrades carbon steel would need.

Which liner suits the acidic water and lime slurry at the former phosphate site and the new terminals?

PTFE for lime slurry and dilute phosphoric and sulfuric acid, with PVDF an option on the hotter or more concentrated acid within its 275 °F limit, both in carbon steel housings with PTFE-lined diaphragm or plug valves for throttling and isolation; polypropylene is available for the ambient lines where a specification calls for it.

Do you supply lined pipe to the Pascagoula and Moss Point shipyards?

We supply lined spools, fittings and valves for shipyard pretreatment, pickling, plating and industrial wastewater lines, in sizes from 1/2" through 12", and can match the lined flanged systems already installed in the shops.