Lined Pipe in Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh's process industry runs on four things that eat carbon steel: coke-oven chemistry in the Mon Valley, cracker caustic in Beaver County, Marcellus brine in Washington and Greene counties, and the hypochlorite and ferric chloride that treat the region's sewage on the North Side. Marspec Technical Products fabricates PTFE-, PVDF- and polypropylene-lined pipe spools and supplies lined fittings and valves for those lines, with spools shipping to Western Pennsylvania from Fairhope, Alabama. Call (251) 625-4949 to get a spool package quoted.

We have been lining steel pipe for more than half a century. Contact us online with a line list, isometrics or a marked-up P&ID and we will come back with a liner recommendation and a price.

Where lined pipe works around Pittsburgh

Beaver County: the Ohio below the city

Thirty miles down the Ohio at Monaca, a 386-acre polyethylene complex cracks Marcellus and Utica ethane in seven furnaces into 1.5 million metric tons of ethylene a year and converts it on two gas-phase lines and a slurry loop into 1.6 million tons of polyethylene, with its own 250-megawatt cogeneration plant and wastewater treatment. The ethane arrives on a 97-mile pipeline from a processing complex at Houston in Washington County. A cracker's caustic wash tower, spent caustic oxidation, amine and sour water systems and demineralizer regeneration are all acid or caustic service. Across the river at Shippingport, two pressurized water reactors with 1,826 megawatts between them run condensate polishing and makeup demineralizers on sulfuric acid and caustic, and an acrylic dispersions plant in Potter Township and the tubular mills at Ambridge and Koppel fill out the riverfront.

The Mon Valley: coke, steel and tar

Up the Monongahela at Clairton sits the largest by-products coke plant in North America, pushing around 13,000 tons of coke a day from more than 18,000 tons of coal, with a by-products section that recovers roughly 145,000 gallons of crude coal tar, 55,000 gallons of light oil, 50 tons of anhydrous ammonia and 35 tons of sulfur every day from the coke oven gas. Ammonia liquor, benzol, tar and the acid and caustic used to scrub the gas are textbook lined-pipe service, and the tar goes to a coal tar distillation plant that makes carbon pitch, creosote and naphthalene. Downriver, the blast furnaces at Braddock feed the sheet mill at West Mifflin, which pickles hot band before cold rolling and coating, and the stainless and specialty alloy rolling and annealing operations in the Allegheny Valley at Brackenridge and Vandergrift add nitric-hydrofluoric pickling, rinse water and acid regeneration to the list.

Neville Island and the North Side

Neville Island has been a chemical address since 1927, when a resin plant began making coumarone-indene resins from coke by-products; it still makes hydrocarbon resins there, and the island's other chemical and terminal operations share the Ohio frontage with the former coke plant site. A few miles downstream on the North Side, the county sanitary authority's 59-acre plant treats up to 295 million gallons a day for 83 communities, one of the largest treatment plants in the Ohio River valley, and is in the middle of a 2 billion dollar program to cut combined sewer overflows. Hypochlorite, bisulfite, ferric and polymer feed at that scale is lined-pipe work by the truckload.

Washington and Greene counties

South of the city, the Marcellus core feeds cryogenic gas plants and de-ethanizers at Houston, Harmon Creek and Smith Township, where amine treating, glycol dehydration and methanol injection are routine. Produced water from those wells is high-chloride brine, and the recycling plants that treat it for reuse generate sodium hypochlorite on site from salt. Brine with free chlorine in it is one of the worst things you can put through a steel pipe and one of the easiest for PTFE in a vented housing.

Lined piping for Western Pennsylvania plants

We fabricate custom lined pipe spools and supply lined fittings in 1/2" through 12", with PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene liners in carbon steel or 304 or 316 stainless housings, built from your isometrics in lengths up to 20 ft, and we supply lined valves in ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling patterns to match the spools.

• Lined strainers, expansion joints, PTFE spacers, spectacle blinds, sight glasses and solid PTFE pipe
• Clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound for lines that must not freeze or crystallize
• Vessel accessories, custom PTFE machining and the rest of the catalog

Pittsburgh winters make temperature maintenance part of the specification rather than an option. Fifty percent caustic crystallizes in the mid 50s F, ammonia liquor and tar lines thicken, and a produced water line on a Greene County pad freezes solid. A traced lined spool under insulation keeps them moving without the cost of a jacketed line.

Specification, briefly

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; every lined pipe spool and fitting is spark tested at a minimum of 10,000 volts. Pressure, vacuum and temperature ratings by liner and size are on the technical details page.

Serving Pittsburgh and the three rivers

We ship lined piping to Pittsburgh, Clairton, Braddock, West Mifflin, McKeesport, Monessen, Neville Island, Coraopolis, Monaca, Beaver, Aliquippa, Ambridge, Shippingport, Brackenridge, Vandergrift, Washington, Canonsburg and Waynesburg. Call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online and tell us what the line carries and how hot it runs.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Pittsburgh, PA

Can you build spools for a turnaround at a Mon Valley coke or steel plant on short notice?

Yes. Send the spool list and isometrics as soon as the scope is set; we fabricate, spark test and ship from Fairhope, Alabama ahead of the window, then build replacements for whatever is found corroded once the unit is open.

Which liner handles coke by-products service, meaning ammonia liquor, benzol and the acid scrubbing?

PTFE across the board, since it covers ammonia, aromatics and sulfuric acid at by-products plant temperatures. For dilute acid at lower temperatures, PVDF or polypropylene liners are available where a specification calls for them, and polypropylene for dilute caustic, though we quote PTFE there too; in a finished spool the liner is a small part of the cost.

We are adding chemical feed capacity at a Pittsburgh-area wastewater plant. Do lined spools and valves fit hypochlorite and ferric chloride?

They do. PTFE-lined spools with PTFE-lined diaphragm or ball valves are our answer for hypochlorite, ferric chloride and bisulfite feed, they bolt straight to existing ANSI B16.5 flanges, and where a specification calls for them, PVDF-lined spools are available for ferric chloride, bisulfite and dilute or lower-pH hypochlorite, and polypropylene-lined spools for ferric chloride and bisulfite.

What do you recommend for produced water and brine lines at Marcellus gas plants in Washington and Greene counties?

PTFE-lined spools and plug valves for brine, plain or carrying free chlorine or another oxidizer, with PVDF or polypropylene available for plain brine where a specification calls for it and electric tracing on outdoor runs. We size the liner to the chloride level and temperature you give us.