A novel method to clean aged RTV coating before recoating

RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanizing silicone rubber) is widely applied in power grids in China to prevent serious pollution flashover accident on the porcelain and glass insulators. The aging of RTV coating inclines to decrease anti-pollution flashover performance of the coating insulators, so the RTV coating need to be repaired after a period of operation time. The mechanical properties of RTV (such as the adhesion) will not be improved if recoating new RTV coating without cleaning the contamination and the aged RTV coating on the insulator surface and the life cycle of recoating RTV will be shortened. This article proposes a novel method to clean the contamination and aged RTV coating before recoating. Based on this method, the quality of recoating RTV coating is improved and the construction period of recoating is greatly shortened. The results of the adhesion tests show that this method to clean the age RTV coating is effective and has potential value in engineering practice.