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 Conduction
and
Breakdown in
Liquid
Dielectrics
2
Liquid dielectrics are used for filling
transformers, circuit breakers and as
impregnants in high voltage cables and
capacitors. For transformer, the liquid
dielectric is used both for providing
insulation between the live parts of the
transformer and the grounded parts
besides carrying out the heat from the
3
The liquid dielectrics mostly used are
petroleum oils. Other oils used are
synthetic hydrocarbons and halogenated
hydrocarbons and for very high
temperature applications silicone oils and
fluori-nated hydrocarbons are also used.
Properties of Liquid Dielectrics:
The three most important properties 4of
 The dielectric strength
 The dielectric constant and
 The electrical conductivity.
Other important properties are viscosity,
thermal stability, specific gravity, flash point
etc.
The most important factors which affect
the dielectric strength of oil are the, presence of
5
-sence of even 0.01% water in oil brings
down the dielectric strength to 20% of the
dry oil value and the presence of fibrous
impurities brings down the dielectric
strength much sharply. Therefore,
whenever these oils are used for providing
electrical insulation, these should be free
from moisture, products of oxidation and
6
The main consideration in the selection of a
liquid dielectric is its chemical stability. The
other considerations are the cost, the
saving in space, susceptibility to
environmental influences etc. The use of
liquid dielectric has brought down the size
of equipment tremendously. Table below
shows the properties of some dielectrics
7
8
Pure Liquids and Commercial
Liquids:
Liquids which are chemically pure,
structurally simple
109 and do not contain any
impurity even in traces of 1 in , are known
as pure liquids. In contrast, commercial
liquids used as insulating liquids are
chemically impure and contain mixtures of
complex organic molecules. In fact their
9
Purification of Liquids:
(a) Removal of dust:
Small dust particles can become charged
and cause local stresses which can initiate
breakdown. They can also coalesce to form
conducting bridges between electrodes.
Careful filtration can remove dust particles
greater in size than 1  m. The strength of
the liquid then increases and greater
10
(b) Removal of dissolved gasses:
Liquid insulation will normally contain
dissolved gas in small but significant
amounts. Some gases such as Nitrogen and
Hydrogen do not appear to upset the
electrical properties to a great extent, but
oxygen and carbon dioxide can cause the
strength to change significantly. Thus it
necessary to control the amount of gases
11
(c) Removal of ionic impurities:
Ionic impurities in the liquid (particularly
residual water which easily dissociates)
leads to abnormal conductivity and heating
of the liquid. Water can be removed by
drying agents, vacuum drying, and by
freezing out in low temperature distillation.
For measurements on liquid dielectrics,
12
critical than it is for measurements on
gases or solids. Not only is the surface
smoothness important, but surface films,
particularly oxides can have a marked
influence on the strength.
Breakdown Tests:
Breakdown tests are normally conducted
using test cells. For testing pure liquids, the
13
testing. Also, test cells are usually an
integral part of the purification system as
shown in Figure below. The electrodes used
for breakdown voltage measurements are
usually spheres of 0.5 to 1 cm in diameter
with gap spacings of about 100-200  m.
Electrode separation is very critical in
measurements with liquids, and also the
14
have a marked influence on the breakdown
strength. The test voltages required for
these tests are usually low, of the order of
50-100 kV.

15
Breakdown in Liquids:
The theory of liquid insulation breakdown is
less understood as of today as compared to
the gas or even solids. Many aspects of
liquid breakdown have been investigated
over the last decades but no general theory
has been evolved so far to explain the
breakdown in liquids. Investigations carried
out so far, however, can be classified into two
1
6
in liquids on a model which is an extension
of gaseous breakdown, based on the
avalanche ionization of the atoms caused by
electron collision in the applied field. The
electrons are assumed to be ejected from
the cathode into the liquid by either a field
emission or by the field enhanced
thermionic effect (Schottky’s effect).This
17
breakdown mecha-nism explains
It has been observed that conduction in
pure liquids at low electric field (1 kV/cm)
is largely ionic due to dissociation of
impurities and increases linearly with the
field strength. At moderately high fields the
conduction saturates but at high field
(electric), 100 kV/cm the conduction
increases more rapidly and thus
18
function of electric field for hexane. This is the
condition nearer to breakdown. However, if the
figure is redrawn starting with low fields, a
current-electric field characteristic as shown in
Figure (b) will be obtained.

19
(a) (b)
The second school of thought recognizes
that the presence of foreign particles in
liquid insulations has a marked effect on
the dielectric strength of liquid dielectrics.
These particles experience an electrical
force directed towards the place of
maximum stress. The particles thus get
accumulated and tend to form a bridge
20
Several theories have been proposed to
explain the breakdown in liquids, and they are
classified as follows:
 Suspended Particle Mechanism.
 Cavitation and Bubble Mechanism.
 Stressed Oil Volume Mechanism.

Suspended Particle Theory:

In commercial liquids, the presence of solid
impurities cannot be avoided. These
2
1
The permittivity of these particles (2) will
be different from the permittivity of the
liquid (1). If we consider these impurities
to be spherical particles of radius r, and if
the applied field is E , then the particles
experience a force F, where

22
This force is directed towards areas of
maximum stress, if 2 > 1, for example, in the
case of the presence of solid particles like
paper in the liquid. On the other hand, if only
gas bubbles are present in the liquid, i.e. 2 <
1, the force will be in the direction of areas of
lower stress. If the number of particles present are large,
they becomes aligned due to these forces, and thus form a
stable chain bridging the electrode gap causing a breakdown
23
particle between the electrodes, it will give
rise to local field enhancement depending
on its shape. If this field exceeds the
breakdown strength of the liquid, local
breakdown will occur near the particle, and
this will result in the formation of gas
bubbles which may lead to the breakdown
of the liquid.
Cavitation and Bubble Mechanism: 24
hydrostatic pressure above the gap length.
The higher the hydrostatic pressure, the
higher the electric strength, which suggests
that a change in phase of the liquid is involved
in the breakdown process. The following
processes might lead to formation of bubbles
in the liquids:
(i) Gas pockets on the surface of electrodes.
(ii) Due to irregular surface of electrodes,
point charge concentration may lead to corona
25
(iii) Changes in temperature and pressure.
(iv) Dissociation of products by electron
collisions giving rise to gaseous products.
The expression for the bubble breakdown strength
is given as:

26
where σ is the surface tension of the liquid,
ε2 and ε1 are the permittivities of the liquid
and bubble, respectively, r the initial radius
of the bubble and Vb the voltage drop in the
bubble. From the expression it can be seen
that the breakdown strength depends on
the initial size of the bubble which of
course depends upon the hydrostatic
pressure above the bubble and
27
account the production of the initial bubble,
the experimental values of breakdown
were found to be much less than the
calculated values. As shown in figure
below:

28
Later on it was suggested that only
incompressible bubbles like water bubbles can
elongate at constant volume according to the
simple gas law pV = RT. Such a bubble under
the influence of electric field changes its shape
to that of a prolate spheroid and reaches a
condition of instability when , the ratio of the
longer to the shorter diameter of the spheroid
is about 1.85 and the critical field producing
29
 where

r transformer oil ε2 = 2.0 and water globule with

= 1 μm, σ = 43 dynes/cm, the above equation give
c = 226 KV/cm. 30
Stressed Oil Volume Mechanism:
In commercial liquids where minute traces of
impurities are present, the breakdown strength
is determined by the "largest possible impurity"
or “weak link”. On a statistical basis it was
proposed that the electrical breakdown strength
of the oil is defined by the weakest region in the
oil, namely, the region which is stressed to the
maximum and by the volume of oil included in
31
to the stressed oil volume. The breakdown
voltage is highly influenced by the gas
content in the oil, the viscosity of the oil,
and the presence of other impurities. The
variation of the breakdown voltage stress
with the stressed oil volume is shown in
Figure below:

32
33
All the theories discussed above do not consider
the dependence of breakdown strength on the gap
length. They all try to account for the maximum
obtainable breakdown strength only. However, the
experimental evidence showed that the
breakdown strength of a liquid depends on the
gap length, given by the following expression,

34
The breakdown voltage also depends on the
nature of the voltage, the mode in which the
voltage is applied, and the time of application.
The above relationship is of practical
importance, and the electrical stress of a given
oil used in design is obtained from this.

35
THANK
YOU
36