Study on Thermal Endurance of Plasticizer in Locally Manufactured Electrical Cable Insulation

Electrical cables are collections of one or more electrical conductors, which are separately insulated and covered together using a sheathing material. Since air does not perform well as a good insulation material, an insulation material is also introduced to resist the passing of electrical current in the radial direction. This will prevent electrical leakage and protect the stability of wire material by concealing it from environmental attacks such as heat and humidity. This paper analyzes the kinetics of the thermal endurance of plasticizers present in locally available electrical cable insulations. For this purpose, a model was developed to map higher temperature accelerated plasticizer evaporation kinetics to lower temperature practically experiencing values. Plasticizer evaporation data were collected in the range of 80-160 °C. Since the plasticizer evaporation reaction occurs over the considered temperature range, notable physical transitions (e.g., crystallization or glass transition) were not observed within the mentioned temperature range. Therefore, The Arrhenius-principle-based approach was employed to map accelerated condition measurements to ambient condition evaporation. An Experimentally determined evaporation behavior was used to define the evaporation kinetics of plasticizers. It was observed that the rate constant of plasticizer evaporation increases with the increasing temperature.