Abstract
Due to the rapid growth of the electric power system, the silicone rubber composite insulator is so widely employed around the world. However, the aging damage and decommission of it inevitably generates plenty of waste silicone rubber. It takes up large amounts of land for non-degradation, which is becoming a serious environmental issue. In this paper, the effort has been made to reuse the silicone rubber of composite insulator by peeling, breaking and adding it into the cement mortar to partly replace river sand by 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 30% in volume. Moreover, the surface modification of silicone rubber particles with H2O2 and KOH is explored to improve hydrophilicity. The mechanical strength of silicone rubber mortar and modified silicone rubber mortar are measured in detail, and the effects of particle size, content and modification of silicone rubber on the properties of mortar are investigated. This study shows that at least a 5% addition of silicone rubber can reduce the strengths, while the 15% addition is obviously favorable for increasing the toughness. Furthermore, the mortar strength gets promoted due to the surface modification. Lastly, the superior thermal insulation and noise reduction of the mortar are obtained as the addition of silicone rubber particles, and an equation between dry apparent density and thermal conductivity of mortar has been developed.
Highlights
The silicone rubber based composite insulators (Figure 1) have been widely used all over the world for ultra-high and extra-high voltage transmission lines in recent years [1,2,3]
In this paper a novel approach to reuse waste silicone rubber of composite insulator applying to the cement mortar was developed
The compressive strength and flexural strength decreased with the silicone rubber content increasing
Summary
The silicone rubber based composite insulators (Figure 1) have been widely used all over the world for ultra-high and extra-high voltage transmission lines in recent years [1,2,3]. The aged composite insulators cannot meet the requirements of electricity transmission, and will be discarded [5,6]. The cladding material of composite insulator is silicone rubber, and the discarding will result in resources waste and vast expanses of land occupied (Figure 2). Materials 2019, 12, 2796 disposal is inappropriate as its combustion gases are very contaminative and highly toxic. 22 of it is an urgent and PEER complicated problem to deal with the plenty of waste silicone rubber based composite insulators.
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