Experimental Investigation of Insulating Properties of Vegetable Oil under High Voltage

Abstract

Due to concerns over the world’s energy necessity and environmental impact of mineral oil, these conditions induce many researchers to search for substitute sources for insulating oil. Alternatives insulating oil with biodegradable characteristics, environment friendly and presented in different countries including Bangladesh such as vegetable oils have been proposed for high voltage applications. In this paper, a relative measurement of breakdown voltage through experimental investigation of coconut, mustard, soybean, and palm oil and their blend (which is available in Bangladesh and cost effective) is presented. Break down voltage was measure with different electrode configuration by changing gap distance. The results show that the blend of (50% coconut oil + 50% palm oil) got high breakdown voltage in mushroom-mushroom electrode, and other side in plane-plane type pure soybean oil got high breakdown voltage, compared with transformer oil. The presented result illustrate that the proposed mixed oil provides better performance than the rise husk oil.