Fengfan Metal Pretreatment Chemicals Non Phosphorus Degreasing Agent For Steel Parts 898A

Product Overview

Fengfan 898A is a white alkaline powder that dissolves in water to build the cleaning bath at the head of a metal plating process. Parts arrive carrying drawing oils, cutting fluid and storage grease; they leave with a surface the rinse water wets evenly, ready for derusting, activation and the plating tank. The blend contains no phosphorus, so the phosphate load that discharge permits usually cap does not enter your wastewater from this stage.

Steel and iron are the main workload — stampings, machined components, welded fabrications, fasteners and tube — and copper parts such as busbars, terminals and connectors run through the same bath. Lines that feed an electroless plating process are among the most demanding users, because that chemistry punishes any trace of oil with adhesion failures that only appear once the parts are finished.

In practice one tank replaces two things a finishing shop often runs side by side: a solvent wipe for oily stock and a hot soak cleaner for everything else. One powder, one bath and one set of rinse stages cover both, and steel and copper work can follow each other without a changeover.

Cleaning Performance on Steel and Copper

• Deep-drawn and stamped steel. Drawing lubricants collect in corners and pockets where a quick dip will not reach. If they survive the cleaner they expand as gas in the plating tank and show up later as blisters and adhesion failures.
• Machined and turned parts. Cutting oil, coolant residue and fine swarf sit on the face and inside blind holes; left behind, they give patchy, dull deposits and a roughness no amount of brightener will fix.
• Copper busbars, terminals and connectors. Buffing compound and oxidised oil films are tougher than fresh cutting oil. The alkaline bath saponifies them so the surface wets evenly at the first rinse instead of holding water breaks.
• Mixed rack and barrel loads. Small parts packed together trap oil between them. The bath has to hold that oil in suspension so it does not redeposit on the next load, which is what separates a working degreaser from a tank of warm water.
• Fabrications going to paint or powder. Residue left under a coating is where underfilm corrosion begins, so the rinse after the bath matters as much as the bath itself.
• Stock carrying protective wax or long-storage oil. These need the warmer end of the bath and a longer contact time than parts that were machined this morning.
• Shops providing metal plating services on mixed work. Steel today, copper tomorrow, and the same bath takes both, so the line does not stop for a chemical change.

Phosphorus-Free Alkaline Chemistry

Why the phosphorus is left out. Phosphorus is the builder most degreasing powders are designed around, and it is also what decides how much of a wastewater budget the cleaning stage consumes. It is a nutrient: once it reaches a drain or a watercourse it feeds algae, which is why discharge limits in most industrial markets put a cap on it. This degreaser is formulated without it. The bath still lifts oil, because the detergency comes from the alkaline builders and surfactants in the blend, but the phosphorus arriving at your treatment plant no longer comes from this tank, and the phosphate sediment that collects in tanks and pipework does not form.

What the alkaline bath actually does. Alkaline chemistry works on oil in two ways. It saponifies fatty and ester-based oils outright, turning them into something the rinse will carry away, and it breaks the surface tension that holds mineral oil on steel so the oil lifts and stays dispersed instead of settling back on the work. That second part is what keeps a bath usable as it loads up: a shop running the same tank all week needs the oil held in suspension, not floating back onto the next rack. Among the pretreatment plating chemicals in a line, this is also one of the simpler ones to control — a concentration, a temperature and a contact time, with no balance of several additives to chase.

Bath life. Because the alkalinity is not consumed by acidic oil carry-in the way an acid cleaner would be, the bath is maintained by top-up rather than by constant replacement, and with no phosphate in the blend there is no phosphate scale to chip out of the tank. Fewer dumps mean less downtime and fewer litres to treat. A degreasing stage that holds its strength also keeps the plating process downstream far more consistent, because the substrate going into the plating tank is the same on Friday as it was on Monday.

Specifications

Application Methods

• Immersion lines. The workhorse method: racks or baskets lowered into a heated tank, with part movement or bath agitation to push fresh solution into recesses. It suits the mixed, high-volume loads that industrial metal plating plants run, and it is the easiest to control because the contact time is simply the clock.
• Ultrasonic tanks. For blind holes, threads, pressed-in inserts and small assemblies where a dip alone leaves a film behind. Cavitation does the work in the recesses, so keep the bath free of heavy soil — an overloaded ultrasonic bath loses its cavitation and the parts come out looking degreased but failing at the rinse.
• Spray washing. Large panels, welded frames and fabrications that will not fit a tank, usually ahead of paint or powder. Nozzle aim and impingement matter more than concentration here; solution that pools in a box section has to drain somewhere, and that drain path should not run back across surfaces you have just cleaned.
• Manual benches and job shops. A single tank, a basket and a timer. This is how most shops that supply metal plating services to a mixed customer base start out, and the powder suits it because the bath is made up by weight and needs no dosing rig.
• Rack and barrel work on the same line. Small parts in barrels and larger parts on racks can share the bath; what changes is how the solution reaches the surface, not the chemistry in the tank.

Operational Efficiency

Heat only what the line needs. The bath works from ambient temperature upward, so a shop without a heated tank can still run it, and a shop with warm rinse water already in the line can often use a heat exchanger it already owns. Running cool costs nothing in energy; running warm shortens the cycle. That trade-off is the main lever on a steel plating line, where the cleaning stage is usually the first thing to become a bottleneck when line speed goes up. Freshly machined parts with light cutting oil clear quickly; parts carrying hardened drawing lubricant or storage wax take longer, and the answer is temperature and time rather than more powder.

Maintenance by top-up, not by rebuild. The bath stays alive by adding powder against consumption and by skimming the oil that floats to the surface. Neither job needs a technician, and neither stops production. Because consumption is quoted per square metre of work, the cost of the stage can be calculated before a job is quoted, which is more useful on a metal plating process than a price per drum. Short cycles matter too, because this stage sits in front of every other step: a degreaser that needs a long soak sets the pace for the whole shift.

Less rework downstream. Almost every adhesion failure, blister and patchy deposit traced back through a line ends at the cleaning stage. A bath that is skimmed and topped up properly removes the most expensive kind of defect — the one found after plating, when the part has to be stripped and run again. Lines running an electroless plating process are the least forgiving of the lot, because an organic film that a zinc bath would tolerate shows up there as haze or poor adhesion, and by then the part has been through the entire line. Fewer re-plates also mean less chemical consumed per good part, so the saving shows up twice.

Bath Make-Up and Maintenance

1. Work out the tank volume and the charge from the working concentration before you open a bag.
2. Fill the tank with water to between one and two thirds of its final volume.
3. Add the powder to the water and stir until it is completely dissolved; tipping the whole charge in at once leaves undissolved material sitting on the tank floor.
4. Top up to the final volume and stir again, so the bath is uniform before the first load goes in.
5. Bring the bath to working temperature and check it — an industrial metal plating line that starts cold will clean the first loads more slowly than the ones that follow.
6. Load the parts for the contact time that suits the soil, then rinse thoroughly; carry-over into the rinse is what leaves the streaks people usually blame on the plating tank.
7. Skim the oil film off the surface at the end of each shift. Oil left floating is oil waiting to be dragged back onto the next rack.
8. Top up with powder against consumption, and check how loaded the bath is before adding more — past a certain point extra powder does nothing and the bath has to be dumped and remade.
9. Keep the plating process and the rinse stages in step: if the rinse after degreasing is stale, a perfectly good bath still gives poor adhesion.

Product Advantages

• One powder for two substrate families. Steel and copper work share the same bath, so a shop running both carries one degreaser instead of two and loses no time on changeover.
• No change to the equipment you already run. The bath goes into a standard tank with the heater, agitation or ultrasonics already installed; nothing in your metal plating equipment has to be replaced to use it.
• Powder form, simple dosing. It is weighed to the bath and dissolves in water, with no drum to pump and nothing left in a container to dispose of. The powder is non-toxic, incombustible and non-explosive, so it stores and handles without precautions beyond normal housekeeping.
• A cost you can quote per part. Once you know how far a kilogram goes, the cleaning stage stops being a guess in a job quote — the same way you already cost the plating chemicals downstream.
• Batch and continuous lines alike. A single tank on a job-shop floor and a multi-stage automated line use the same powder at the same concentration; only the handling and the rinse arrangement change.

Ordering and Delivery

• Minimum order quantity. Varies by chemical and is confirmed with our sales team for each order.
• Payment. 100% T/T in advance.
• Lead time. 2 weeks.
• Packing. 10 kg/box; 25 kg or 50 kg/bag; 20 kg/25 kg/30 kg/200 kg/drum; 1000 kg/IBC drum — the standard formats used for our plating chemicals, chosen to suit the quantity you order.
• Shipping. Per the terms agreed in the current contract.
• Documentation and warranty. An inspection certificate is issued after delivery stating the batch number and the warranty period.
• Samples and trials. Ask your sales contact about sample availability and the trial quantity that matches your tank, particularly if a steel plating line is moving off a phosphorus-containing cleaner.
• Bath sizing help. Send the tank volume and the parts you run, and we will check the charge against the working concentration before you commit to a quantity.

Substrate Compatibility

• Steel and iron are the main application. Stampings, machined parts, welded fabrications, fasteners and tube are all cleaned at 50–80 g/L, 15–50 °C for 5–20 minutes, whether the line runs batch baskets or a continuous process.
• Copper parts can share the same bath. Busbars, terminals and connectors carry buffing compound and oxidised oil films that the alkaline solution lifts so the surface wets evenly at the first rinse. No separate degreaser is needed for copper work.
• Aluminium is not the substrate for 898A. Aluminium and aluminium-alloy parts should use 898B, the non-phosphorus aluminium grade in the same family, which is formulated for aluminium and aluminium-alloy chemical degreasing at 50–80 g/L, 20–50 °C for 5–20 minutes.
• Do not assume one alkaline cleaner covers every metal. The 898A and 898B grades are intended for different substrates. Running aluminium through a bath set up for steel work is a mis-application, and the right move is to route those parts to the aluminium grade rather than adjust the concentration and expect a reliable result.
• Keep mixed production on the correct bath. If a shop processes steel or copper alongside aluminium, keep the aluminium work on the 898B bath instead of sharing the 898A tank. This avoids uncertainty at the cleaning stage and protects the surface quality going into the next step of the metal plating process.
• Check the alloy before you charge the tank. Tell us the substrate, the alloy where known, the soil on the parts and the cleaning method. For an industrial metal plating line handling several metals, that information decides which grade goes into which tank before any powder is weighed.
• Use the same rule for paint and powder lines. Steel fabrications going to coating follow the steel grade; aluminium extrusions or castings follow the aluminium grade. The cleaning method can stay the same, but the chemistry should match the metal being cleaned.

Technical Support & Model Matching

Choosing the right match is where most sourcing decisions stall. As a trading supplier, we keep one point of contact from first enquiry to after-sales: tell us what you are making and the conditions you work under, and we shortlist the closest matches from our supplier network, compare specifications and arrange samples before you commit to a bulk order. If something does not behave as expected, we work with the supplying partner on the cause and a practical fix, and stay with the case until it is settled. Email, WeChat or WhatsApp enquiries get a reply within 24 hours.

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