An Eco-Friendly Gas Insulated Transformer Design

Abstract

Electricity companies around the world are constantly seeking ways to provide electricity more safely and efficiently while reducing the negative impact on the environment. Mineral oils have been the most popular transformer insulation, having excellent electrical insulating properties, but have many problems such as high flammability, significant cleaning problems, and are toxic to fish and wildlife. This paper presents an alternative approach to mineral oil: a transformer design that is clean and provides better performance and environmental benefits. A 50 kVA, 34.5/0.4 kV gas insulated distribution transformer was designed and evaluated using the COMSOL Multiphysics environment. R410A was used as insulation material. R410A is a near-azeotropic mixture of difluoromethane (CH2F2, called R-32) and pentafluoro ethane (C2HF5, called R-125), which is used as a refrigerant in air conditioning applications. It has excellent properties including environmentally friendly, no-ozone depletion, low greenhouse effect, non-explosive and non-flammable, First, the breakdown voltage of the selected gas was determined. The electrostatic and thermal properties of the R410A gas insulated transformer were investigated in the COMSOL environment. The simulation results for the performance of oil and SF6 gas insulated transformers using the same model were compared. The gas-insulated transformer is believed to have equivalent performance and is an environmentally friendly alternative to current oil-based transformers.