Comparative Analysis of Palm Oil and Hydrocarbon Mineral Oil for Power Transformer Operation

Abstract

The erstwhile transformer oil material, for all these periods of more than two centuries, has been championing liquid dielectrics, for machines’ cooling and insulation purposes. However, its use has detrimental and attendant consequences on global terrestrial and aquatic habitats, industries and global warming. Palm oil (Elaise Guinensis Eg; and/or Elaise Oleifera Eo) is presently posing a great challenge to liquid hydrocarbon in the operation of transformers. Despite the ease in availability of mineral oil today, especially for oil producing nations, this paper aims at unveiling its several underscores and analyses of the viscosity, flash point, density, neutralisation (acidic value) number, electrical resistivity, and breakdown voltage (BDV) results of the respective mineral and palm oil samples. Palm oil’s test results values of approximately, 244OC, 55kV and 0.004 mgkOH/gm of oil, was recorded, respectively for the flash point, breakdown voltage (BDV) and acid neutralisation index, as compared with corresponding mineral oil’s values of 142OC, 59kV and 0.004 mgkOH/gm. The results obtained favoured the use of palm oil than the mineral oil for transformer’s operation.