Oils inside transformers are mainly for insulating purpose- apart from which they also suppress corona and arcing, and also act as coolants inside the machines. These oils must be maintained absolutely clean and dry in order to achieve and sustain the optimal insulating performance and dielectric strength. Here rises the need for transformer oil purification process.

What is oil purification?

Oil Purification is a process the reduces, or in fact, eliminates all the physical contaminants from oils by means of physical processes such as oil filtration, de-humidification, and degasification. A typical oil purification process is nothing but the combination of mechanical filtration and vacuum degassing. Transformer oil purification process effectively removes all those particles that are larger than 0.2 micron as well as most of the dissolved water and gases in the oil.

Transformer oil purification process serves to improve the properties of insulating oil. It eliminates the acid nature, over moisture, traces of water, dissolved gases, and particulate matter from the insulating oil effectively and rapidly. The bottom line of this purification process is to enhance the performance level of transformers, circuit breakers, mutual inductors, cables, and capacitors. All these equipment and machinery use an insulating system.

Transformer oils start deteriorating over time and decay as well. Extremely high temperatures, prescence of oxygen and water, catalytic action of the materials present within the transformers, and this deterioration and decay- all these factors pose a collective impact which is oxidation and cracking of oils. The by-products released through all such processes are highly acidic and this in turn, results in even more deterioration of the oils. The quality of oils inside the transformers indeed directly harms transformers in the long run.

Oil degassing process

Oil degassing process involves multiple passes of oil and vacuum- oil that is heated to extremely high temperatures-to finally purify the oil. This process can be performed on an energized transformer. Oil is actually pulled from the transformer to the degasification unit-it is heated, vacuum degassed, and finally filtered in this unit; and then purified oil is transferred back to transformer.