Abstract
The negative impacts of catastrophic fire and explosion accidents due to copper corrosion problems of oil-filled electrical transformers are still in the spotlight due to a lack of effective methods for early fault detection. To address this gap, a condition monitoring (CM) procedure that can detect such problems in the initial stage is proposed in this paper. The suggested CM procedure is based on identified measurable variables, which are the relevant by-products of the corrosion reaction, and utilizes an Early Fault Diagnosis (EFD) model to detect and solve the copper corrosion problems. The EFD model includes a fault trend chart that can track a fault progression during the useful life of transformers. The purpose of this paper is to verify and validate the effectiveness of the suggested CM procedure by an empirical study in a power plant. The result of applying this procedure was early detection of copper corrosion problems in two transformers with suspected copper corrosion propagation from a total of 84. The corrective action was adding an optimized amount of a passivator, an anticorrosion additive, to suppress the corrosion reaction at the correct time. The main conclusion of this study is the importance of early detection of transformer faults to avoid the negative impacts on societal, company, and individual levels.
Highlights
The condition monitoring (CM) procedure was established according to investigations in [3,6] based on an integration between three main elements that built the effectiveness toward preventing early copper corrosion problems in transformers
The measured values of the measurable variables of dibenzyl disulfide (DBDS), benzyl mercaptan (BM), hydrogen sulfide (H2 S) gas, and toluene of seven transformers were identified with suspected copper corrosion propagation among the 84 and were recorded in September 2020
The main conclusion of this study is the importance of early detection of transformer faults to avoid the negative impacts on societal, company, and individual levels
Summary
Copper corrosion problems in the mineral oil-filled electrical transformers containing corrosive sulfur compounds have increased significantly [1,2]. The problem attributes to the formation of sulfur deposits on the internal components, such as copper windings through their insulating paper in the form of semi-conductive copper sulfide (Cu2 S) [2,3]. The main consequence of these deposits is decreasing the dielectric property of the insulation system that can lead to partial discharge and arcing phenomena, which in turn is causing fire and explosion accidents [2,4,5,6]. The negative impacts of these accidents are very serious, having resulted in injuries and deaths, contamination by chemicals and, power outages for customers and loss of power plant profits [4,7,8]
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