Understanding the Lightning Impulse Discharge Characteristics of Nano Silica Modified Sunflower Oil for High-Voltage Insulation Applications

Vegetable oils with nanotechnology added to them are a possible replacement for mineral oils in power transformer applications today. Because of the size and production cost reductions as well as the oil's high level of biodegradability, this could result in an increase in the dielectric strength of insulating fluid. Since transformers are mainly used for outdoor applications, understanding the capability of insulating fluid to withstand lightning discharge is a vital issue. This study used experimental analysis to compare the lightning discharge performance of pure sunflower oil and sunflower oil modified with SiO2 (Nano) at various weight-per-volume concentrations of 0.01 %, 0.05 %, and 0.1 %. This experimental work was conducted with 1.2/50 µs of standard lightning impulse voltage with positive polarity. The result illustrated that the nano-modified sunflower oil had greater lightning impulse withstand strength than the pure sunflower oil.