Requisitos e restrições do uso do óleo vegetal de tungue como líquido isolante para transformadores elétricos de distribuição de média tensão

Abstract

Due to the need to develop a renewable insulating liquid alternative to mineral oil used in transformers, the scientific community and energy sector companies look for to develop vegetable oils for this application. Whereas, now the vegetable oils used in transformers in a commercial way have vegetable based competing with human food. Thus, the present work aims to verify the possibility of tung oil be used in distribution transformers, given its high production capacity and it does not compete with human food. For this, was used as a reference, the physicochemical characteristics of the NBR 15422 - vegetable insulating oil for electrical equipment, which is the standard responsible for use also in transformers. Aiming to reduce the acidity of tung oil at standardized levels was performed adsorption process of polar components through Fuller Earth. Treatment with Fuller Earth was ineffective for raw tung oil, therefore, an industrial process for oil refining was carried out to reduce its acidity. For verification of tung oil characteristics, a transformer prototype has been built and performed routine dielectric tests according to NBR 5356, with electrical faults were not detected and also were obtained resistance of isolation levels close to those obtained in transformers use vegetable and mineral insulating oils marketed for electrical equipments.