Impact of conducting materials on furan-spectral correlation of transformer oil

This paper investigates the impact of conducting materials on the correlation of furan concentration in transformer oil and its spectral response characteristic. The presence of furan derivatives in aged-transformer oil has been one of the key indicators for solid dielectric deterioration. Identification and quantification of furan derivatives are currently performed using high performance liquid chromatography or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry based on ASTM D5837 standard. Although these techniques are well established, they need an expert personal to conduct the test and to analyse its results. Moreover, the test is relatively expensive and the analysis of oil sample may take days as most utilities sending transformer oil samples to external laboratories to be tested. Recently, it has been proven that furan concentration in transformer oil has a strong correlation to the oil spectral response. This paper is to validate this finding and to investigate the impact of conducting materials within transformer oil on this correlation. In this context, extensive experimental tests are conducted to assess the impact of various concentration of conducting materials (e.g., copper dust) dissolved in transformer oil samples of different furan contents on its absorption and transmission spectra. The experimental results show that the impact of dissolved conducting materials on the oil spectral response is minimal and the previously estimated correlation can still be applied.