A Novel Furfural-detection-method for the Aging Prediction of Paper Insulation in Power Transformer

Paper insulation is an important kind of solid dielectric in power transformers which influences the safety and stable operation of the transformers. Furfural, as an important indicator in transformer oil, can evaluate the degradation degree of paper insulation and predict the remaining life of transformers. However, it is always inconvenient to detect furfural because of the extraction procedure. In this work, a novel no-extraction furfural-detection-method based on UV-Vis spectrometry was proposed to evaluate the aging of paper insulation by the degree of polymerization (DP). The results show that this furfural-detection-method has a favorable linear relationship between the concentrations of furfural (C-k) and its characteristic absorbance. The coefficient of deviation is less than 6.9% (n=7) for the furfural detection, indicating the satisfactory accuracy of results. The correlation between DP of papers and C-k are simulated with the goodness of fit (R-2=0.964). Then, the aging of paper insulation could be predicted by the calculation of DP.