Experimental Study on Air Decomposition By-Product Under Creepage Discharge Fault and Their Impact on Insulating Materials

Creepage discharge faults in air on solid insulating material play a vital role in degradation and ageing of material which ultimately leads to breakdown of power system equipment. And electric discharge decompose air in to its byproducts such as Ozone and NOx gases. By analyzing air decomposition gases is a potential method for fault diagnostic in air. In this paper, experimental research has been conducted to study the effect of creepage discharge on rate of generation of air decomposition by-products using different insulating materials such as RTV, epoxy and fiberglass laminated sheet. Moreover XRF analysis has been done to analyze creepage discharge effect on these insulating materials. All experiments have been done in an open air test cell under constant temperature and pressure conditions. While analysis has been made for low and high humidity conditions. The results show that the overall concentration of air decomposition byproducts under creepage discharge in low humidity is 4% higher than concentration measured in high humidity. Based on this study a mathematical relationship is also proposed for the rate of generation of air decomposition by-products under creepage discharge fault. This study leads to indirect way for diagnostic of creepage discharge propagation in air.