Lightning Impulse Breakdown Voltage of Rice Bran Oil for Transformer Application

Transformer oil does not only serve as an insulating liquid, but also in removing heat from the windings and cores. Mineral oil (MO) has been widely used in transformers for more than 150 years. Recently, researchers have attempted to search for alternative insulating oils due to the possibility that MO will run out in the future together with the concern on fire safety and environmental pollution. Among the potential oils is rice bran oil (RBO). This work presents the studies of the lightning impulse (LI) of RBO behavior under various electric fields, gap distances and testing methods. The electrical performances of LI tests show that RBO and Palm Oil (PO) have lower LI breakdown voltage than MO under both uniform and non-uniform electric fields. However, the difference in LI breakdown voltages between RBO, PO and MO are slightly small which is less than 20%. In addition, there is no significant effect in the various testing methods under both uniform field and non-uniform field where the percentages of difference are less than 12% and 8% respectively. The data of LI breakdown voltage were statistically analysed to predict the withstand voltage and 50% breakdown voltage of oil samples by using Weibull distribution. The Weibull distribution of MO, PO and RBO has well fit with the fitting line. Finally, the relationship between LI voltages under a non-uniform field with various parameters of PO and RBO was obtained and proposed. From this work, it can be concluded that RBO shows promising results to be considered as an alternative to MO in transformer applications.