Lined Pipe in Rhode Island

Rhode Island is the smallest state with one of the densest industrial footprints in New England: a biologics campus in West Greenwich, a submarine yard and a polymer film plant at Quonset Point, vinyl and specialty chemical compounding in Pawtucket, the jewelry and plating trade that Providence built its name on, and the two largest wastewater plants in the state on upper Narragansett Bay. All of it moves acid, caustic, hypochlorite or high-purity water. Marspec Technical Products fabricates plastic-lined pipe spools and supplies the lined fittings and valves for those services, with spools shipping nationwide from Fairhope, Alabama.

Call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online with a line list or a sketch. We quote custom spools, lined fittings and lined valves together.

Who in Rhode Island needs lined pipe

The state has roughly 1,200 manufacturers and about 50,000 manufacturing workers, with North Kingstown, Pawtucket, Providence, Cranston and Warwick the top industrial towns. The piping needs cluster in a few places.

Biologics in West Greenwich and the Quonset industrial base

The biologics campus off Route 2 in West Greenwich employs around a thousand people and added a next-generation plant built on single-use, modular process equipment, the first of its kind in the country. Single-use bioreactors change what touches the product, but the plant utilities around them do not: clean-in-place skids still circulate sodium hydroxide and phosphoric acid, buffer and media preparation still handle concentrated acids and salts, and purified water still runs in orbital-welded, electropolished 316L sanitary loops. PTFE-lined pipe and lined diaphragm valves serve the chemical distribution and deionized utility water side of these plants without contributing iron or chromium. At Quonset Point in North Kingstown, the submarine yard runs blasting, pickling, phosphating and coating lines, and the oriented polyester and polypropylene film plant nearby handles solvents, coating chemistries and treatment effluent.

Jewelry, plating and the Narragansett Bay treatment plants

Providence, Cranston, Warwick and Pawtucket still house the plating, electroforming and finishing shops that grew up around the jewelry industry, now serving medical, electronics and defense work as well. Their tanks run nickel, gold, rhodium, copper and chrome chemistries with sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid, cyanide and caustic, and their pretreatment systems use hypochlorite for cyanide oxidation and bisulfite for chrome reduction. The Narragansett Bay Commission tracks metal finishers as a distinct class of industrial users at both of its plants: Field's Point in Providence, rated for 77 million gallons a day of secondary treatment and 200 million at peak, and Bucklin Point in East Providence at 46 million. Both remove nitrogen and disinfect, and smaller plants in Warwick, Cranston, Woonsocket, Newport and Westerly do the same, which means bulk sodium hypochlorite, sodium bisulfite, ferric chloride and alum moving through pipe that stainless cannot be trusted with. Pawtucket's vinyl compounding and specialty chemical operations add plasticizers, stabilizers and acid-bearing vents to the list.

At the Port of Providence, liquid bulk fuel terminals share the waterfront with scrap, cement, asphalt and road salt handling, and the gas-fired plants in Providence and Burrillville regenerate demineralizer resin with sulfuric acid and caustic. Fuel additive, tank-water drawoff and brine lines at the port, and regeneration and neutralization lines at the plants, are natural fits for PTFE-lined pipe.

The lined piping line we ship to Rhode Island

Custom spools: 1/2" through 12", PTFE, PVDF or polypropylene lined, in carbon steel or 304/316 stainless housings, up to 20 ft long, fabricated to your drawing. Lined fittings, elbows, tees, reducers, laterals and flanges, conform dimensionally to ANSI B16.5. Our lined pipe and fittings page covers liner selection by media.

Lined valves in ball, plug, butterfly, diaphragm, check and sampling styles, with PTFE or PFA wetted surfaces, matched to the spools.

Accessories and other products: lined strainers, expansion joints, spacers, spectacle blinds, sight glasses and solid PTFE pipe, along with clamp-on steam heaters, electric tracing and heat-transfer compound for the caustic, bisulfite and hypochlorite lines that sit outdoors at a bay-side treatment plant through a Rhode Island winter.

Quality you can write into 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, and each lined pipe spool and fitting gets a minimum 10,000-volt spark test before it leaves Fairhope. More than half a century in plastic-lined piping stands behind the ratings on our Technical Details page.

Providence, Pawtucket, Quonset and beyond

We ship to Providence, East Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket in the Blackstone Valley; Cranston, Warwick and West Warwick; North Kingstown, Quonset Point and West Greenwich; Newport, Portsmouth and Bristol; and Westerly and South County. Call (251) 625-4949 or contact us online to start a quote.

FAQ: Lined Pipe in Rhode Island

Do you supply lined pipe for the clean-in-place chemical systems at Rhode Island biologics plants?

Yes. PTFE-lined spools and lined diaphragm valves carry CIP caustic, phosphoric acid and buffer-preparation acids without metal pickup. Sanitary product-contact tubing stays in your stainless spec.

What do you recommend for hypochlorite and bisulfite feed at Field's Point or Bucklin Point?

Vented PTFE-lined pipe with lined ball valves. Both chemicals pit stainless, and hypochlorite releases oxygen as it degrades, so high-point vents matter as much as the liner.

Can lined pipe handle the mixed acid and cyanide waste streams from a Providence plating shop?

Yes. PTFE resists sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid, cyanide and caustic across the pH swings of a pretreatment system, with vented housings on the hydrochloric acid lines because HCl permeates the liner. We recommend and quote PTFE for the ambient rinse and transfer lines too; polypropylene-lined pipe is available for them where a specification calls for it, except on nitric acid.

How do you keep outdoor chemical lines at a bay-side plant from freezing?

With clamp-on steam heaters or electric tracing and heat-transfer compound sized to the liner's temperature limit, so 50 percent caustic stays above its crystallization point and bisulfite keeps flowing in January.