Akademia Baru Electrical and Chemical Properties of New Insulating Oil for Transformer Using Pure Coconut Oil

The petroleum based mineral oil has been used as the insulation for the transformer since a long time ago. Mineral oil acts as a cooling and insulating medium in transformer. Transformer mineral oil has been replaced by alternative oils such as synthetic oil and natural esters due to their biodegradability and environmentally friendly nature. Due to the environmental consideration, mineral oil is the poor biodegradability and future scarcity. It can cause the pollution and contaminate soil when a serious spill takes place. The mineral oil was extracted from the petroleum, which is going to run out in the future and the petroleum is non-renewable energy. The paper presents a study that has been carried out to investigate the performance coconut oil as an insulator of the transformer and to investigate the insulating properties of coconut oil. There are two aspects was considered, which are electrical and chemical properties. The parameters of electrical properties that have been investigated are breakdown voltage and resistivity. While, chemical properties are kinematic viscosity, flash point and water content. The study shows that pure coconut oil gave the best performance in chemical properties compare to mineral oil while coconut oil has potential to be used the alternative insulator of the transformer. Copyright © 2016 Penerbit Akademia Baru All rights reserved.