Analysis of Internal Pyrolysis Characteristics of Crosslinked Polyethylene Cable

Cable faults usually cause the core temperature to rise, and the insulation material will be pyrolyzed to produce gas. In this paper, a series of simulation experiments of overheating fault in XLPE cable are carried out, and the effects of temperature and time on the decomposition characteristics of insulating materials are analyzed. It was found that under internal overheating conditions, XLPE cables would pyrolyze to produce more than ten kinds of gases, such as C2H4, 2-C4H8, C2H6, C3H6, $C$3H8, CH3Cl and C2H8Cl. Combining the application scenario and the chemical properties of decomposed gases, C2H4 and 2-C4H8 are proposed as characteristic gases to identify the early overheating faults in XLPE cables. This paper presents the feasibility of applying decomposition gas method to on-line monitoring of XLPE cable faults.