Insulation System of Power Transformers—Behavior Comparison of Mineral Oils and Natural Ester Dielectric Fluids

Paper deals with a comparison of selected properties of several vegetable oil representatives along their accelerated thermal ageing at the temperature of 90 ℃. These properties are compared to two widely used and commercially available mineral transformer oils. A combined insulating system (an oil-paper system) was created with the usage of mentioned oils for measurement purposes. Dissipation factor, capacity and volume resistance are characteristics measured along a thermal ageing of the oil-paper systems. Infrared spectroscopy was used as an additional method. After 1,000 hours of ageing, the dissipation factor of all systems based on vegetable oils did not exceed the value of 0.015. The volume resistance of systems containing mineral oils was approx. twice as high as the volume resistance of those with vegetable oils. The capacity on the other hand was slightly lower in the case of mineral oils application. An experiment also showed that the paper combined with the vegetable oil dries more quickly than in combination with the mineral oil. Infrared spectroscopy has not shown any expressive changes in the chemical structure of all tested oils yet (up to 1,000 hours of ageing).