Thermo-electric Impact of Nano-Materials on Transformer Oil and Synthetic Ester Oil

Abstract

Transformer oil plays a vital role in the electrical insulation of transformers. It helps lower the operating temperature as well as protect the solid insulation from excess heat. However, due to the inherent meagre thermophysical and chemical properties of transformer oil, the demand for transformer oil based nanofluids becomes a binding need. Nanofluids exhibit innovative and unique properties because of the small size and high surface to volume ratio of the nanomaterials. This makes them a substantial material to be employed in the ongoing research related to the enhancement of thermal conductivity and other electrical properties of conventional fluids. Characteristics of nanoparticles like Brownian motion, interfacial resistance, morphology of suspended nanoparticles and their aggregating behavior has fascinated researchers for a long time now. In this paper, initially the nanomaterials are synthesized using the two-step method. The thermo-physical properties of nanofluids are studied, later on the conducting behavior of nanofluid is tailored by suitably choosing the nanoparticles. Subsequently, the thermal conductivity of nanofluid is discussed taking three different types of conducting and nonconducting metal oxide nanoparticles $(TiO_{2;}Al_{2}O_{3;}Fe2O_{3})$ in terms of their concentration. The prepared nano-fluids are used for calculating insulation resistance, dissipation factor and thermal conductivity in the temperature range of $20^{\circ}{C}$ upto $80^{\circ}{C}$ with a step size increase of $20^{\circ}{C}$. The results reveal that these properties of the base fluid get enhanced with the use of nanoparticles resulting in the efficacy enhancement of insulation oil.