The aging impact on the cooling capacity of a natural ester used in power transformers

In this paper, an experimental and numerical research was conducted to study the aging effect on the cooling performance of a natural ester habitually used in power transformers. A monitored experimental platform has been used to observe the temperature increases with the aging of the ester. Three samples with three aging levels (fresh oil, aged oil and aged oil with paper) were tested at three load levels, C = 0.72, C = 1 and C = 1.3 (9 tests). The two aged samples (6 liters each) were aged in an accelerated way within an oven: 1 week at 150 °C. Also, some physicochemical properties of the insulation system were determined. In the case of the liquid, viscosity, moisture, acidity, dissipation factor (90 °C) were measured. The degree of polymerization and the moisture were measured in paper samples. A 2D numerical model has been developed with COMSOL Multiphysics to replicate the thermal-hydraulic behavior of the samples in the platform. That is, the idea is to determine the temperature and velocity distributions of the different samples in order to analyze their differences and to compare their cooling capacity. At first sight, the aging affects negatively to the cooling capacity of the new alternative liquid based on natural esters.