One-Step Electrical Insulating Oil Regeneration on Electret PVDF/BaTiO₃ Composite Nanofibers

Insulating oil is a pivotal component of power transformers, but it suffers from aging byproducts during service operation. The aging byproducts from the degradation of oil insulation tend to induce insulation failure, which poses a significant threat to the security of the power grid. Therefore, the regeneration of insulating oil is required to prolong the useful life of insulating oil and hence be of economic and ecological interests. Typical in-use oil regeneration routes employ multi-step procedures. In this work, a one-step regeneration method using a PVDF/BaTiO₃ composite membrane is proposed. BaTiO₃ endows the composite membrane with improved hydrophobicity and an electret state. The regeneration performance of the PVDF/BaTiO₃ nanofiber membrane was assessed by considering the acid value, moisture content, dielectric loss factor tan δ, and the AC breakdown voltage of the refreshed oil. The test results showed that the filtration efficiencies toward formic acid and moisture were up to 77.5% and 60.6%, respectively. Moreover, the dielectric loss factor tan δ of the refreshed oil decreased evidently at a power frequency, and the AC breakdown voltage rose from 23.7 kV to 38.9 kV. This suggests that the PVDF/BaTiO₃ composite membrane may be employed efficiently, and it minimizes aging byproducts via the one-step filtration.