Experimental Study of the Electrical and Physiochemical Properties of Different Types of Crude Palm Oils as Dielectric Insulating Fluids in Transformers

Abstract

This paper gives information on the electrical and physiochemical characteristics of six different types of palm oil compared with traditional mineral oil. We found that natural processed crude palm oil (PO-C) had a higher resistance to AC breakdown voltage than other types of palm oil, including traditional mineral oil. The results of the positive lightning impulse voltage test for PO-C were still the highest compared to other types of palm oil, including traditional mineral oil, at 58.26%. The summarised dissipation factors of all tested crude palm oils were significantly higher than those of mineral oils, which will make the palm oil less insulating, especially in PO-A palm oil (36.197%), where the values were higher than those of other oils, while mineral oil has a slightly increased dispersion factor. For relative permittivity, all palm oils were compared, and it was found that PO-C had a lower relative permittivity than the other oils. In terms of physical and chemical properties, in the moisture content test on all oils, PO-C had the percentile with the highest moisture content decrease of 58.74%. In the case of testing the surface tension value, it was found that traditional mineral oil had the highest value (48.46 m/Nm) when compared to palm oil. On the other hand, the acidity in traditional mineral oil is the lowest (0.03 mg KOH/g) compared to all palm oils. Results from studies demonstrate the possibility of using natural processed crude palm oil, or PO-C, as a replacement for traditional mineral oil. This is consistent with the results of electrical properties that show PO-C is higher than other types of palm oil and includes traditional mineral oil.