An investigation into the dynamics of partial discharge propagation in mineral oil based nanofluids

Recent studies present a model which assumes that conductive nanoparticles can reduce the speed of the positive streamer propagation in mineral oil due to electron trapping at the particle surface. Time resolved partial discharge measurements can be used to evaluate the discharge dynamics and to verify this hypothesis. A special measurement setup was built to enable the recording of the discharge dynamics. In this study, the effect of nanoparticles with different conductivities on the discharge dynamics of mineral oil is investigated. The time resolved current shapes of partial discharges in nanofluids and mineral oil are compared. To understand the effect of the conductivity of the nanoparticles on the partial discharge dynamics of mineral oil, nanoparticles with two different conductivities are synthesized with mineral oil. The two types of nanoparticles are silica and fullerene. The host fluid used in this study is Shell DialaS3ZXIG mineral oil.