Dielectric Properties of Natural Ester Oils Used for

Transformer Application Under Temperature

Variation
M. H. A. Hamid, M. T. Ishak, M. F. Md. Din, N. S. Suhaimi, N. I. A. Katim
Faculty of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
National Defence University of Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur

Abstract—The common insulating oil used in oil-filled
transformer applications is mineral oil. In recent years,
significant attention has been paid to alternative insulating fluids
such as synthetic and natural ester liquids. The natural ester
liquid is considered to be the best substitute of mineral oil in
future. In order to apply natural ester liquid in transformers
safely, it is important to have detailed information on its
dielectric properties and its performance should be proven to be
comparatively at par with mineral oil. This paper mainly focuses
on a comparative study of ac breakdown voltage, dielectric
constant, dissipation factor (tan į) and resistivity of five different
types of natural ester liquid under a variation of temperature.
The natural ester liquids used in this experiment are rice bran
oil, palm oil, corn oil, sunflower oil and canola oil. Based on the
results, the dielectric constant and resistivity of all types of
natural ester oil decreased with the increase in temperature.
However, the dissipation factor properties in this experiment
increased with the increase in temperature. In general, among all
types of natural ester oil, the canola-based ester oil has the best
potential to replace the current transformer oil due to its good
dielectric properties as shown in this paper.
Keywords—ester oils; tan į; resistivity; permittivity; breakdown
voltage
I. INTRODUCTION
Insulating oil or also known as transformer oil helps to
dissipate heat of the transformer and also acts as liquid
insulation in the transformer. It also preserves the core and
winding as it is fully immersed in the oil and it prevents a
direct contact of atmospheric oxygen with the cellulose paper
insulation winding, which is susceptible to oxidation. The
investigation of electrical properties of ester oil is necessary in
order to determine the efficiency of insulating oil for
transformer application. Although mineral insulating oil has a
good insulation performance and low in cost, it has a low flash
point, low ignition point, and its biodegradability cannot
satisfy the requirement of high temperature performance and
environmental protection. Due to environmental issues, ester
oils are considered a new option to replace the mineral oil [1].
There is a relationship between dielectric constant,
dissipation factor and resistivity which is related to the
efficiency of insulation behaviour of the liquid. In this paper, a
comparison of dielectric properties of five different types of
ester oil is studied. The main purpose is to identify the ester oil
characteristics and present a comprehensive comparison of
dielectric properties in order to decide on the most suitable
insulating oil for transformer application.
II. DIELECTRIC CONSTANT, DISSIPATION FACTOR AND
RESISTIVITY
The most important electrical properties of insulating oil
are dielectric constant, tan į (loss angle) and resistivity (ȡ).
Besides that, there are a few other parameters that need to be
measured such as viscosity, thermal stability, specific gravity
and flash point.
The dielectric constant or known as relative permittivity
(ε) is a non-sinusoidal parameter that depends on the internal
structure of the insulating oil. It is the ratio of the permittivity
of insulating oil to the permittivity of free space or vacuum.
The dielectric constant shows how easily a material can
change polarity by the existence of electric field on the
insulating oil [2]. Polarization can cause positive charges to be
displaced toward the field and negative charges to be shifted in
the opposite direction. When an insulator is located in an
electric field, electrical charges never flow through the
material as compared to conductor material.
When a sinusoidal voltage is applied across an insulator,
the current flowing through an insulator ideally leads the
voltage by 90°. Tangent of the angle is the angle that is short
of 90° and is called the dissipation factor. In the presence of
alternating field, a capacitance current and a resistive current
that are 90° out of phase with respect to each other are created.
The vector sum of these two currents represents the total
current and the angle between the capacitance current vector
and the resultant total current vector is classified as loss angle.
Tan į testing method is a diagnostic technique used in order
to determine the quality of the insulating oil. Thus, it is
desirable to have the value of tan į as small as possible while
the electrical resistance of an electrical conductor (ȡ) refers to
the opposition in the passage of an electric current that passes
through a conductor.

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 III. EXPERIMENTS

A. Preparation of Samples
The samples used in this study are cooking oils that are readily
available in the market. They are classified into two categories
which are received oil and dried oil conditions. The received
samples were directly tested after getting them from the
supplier or market with no pre-treatment done before
measurement. On the other hand, the dried samples went
through the process of filtering for three times and dried at
85°C for two days in order to eliminate any unwanted particles
and moisture. Then, the samples were left for another 24 hours
at ambient temperature (23-26°C) before being tested.
B. AC Breakdown Voltage Test
AC breakdown voltages of the samples under investigation
were measured using BAUR Oil tester DTA 100C. This
equipment is equipped with bi-spherical electrodes installed
horizontally with 2.5mm gap distance which satisfy the IEC Fig. 1. Comparison of AC breakdown voltage of natural esters.
60156 standards [3]. The tests were conducted at atmospheric
pressure and room temperature (23-26°C). The AC breakdown The dielectric constant or called relative permittivity has
tester applied AC voltage across the test cell, filled with oil poor conductivity and ability to hold a charge with an applied
samples at 50Hz frequency. AC voltage was applied across the electric field. The value of the dielectric constant can be
electrodes of the test cell with an ascending rate of 2kV/s. A calculated by using the ratio of capacitance of oil filled test
total of 50 readings of breakdown voltage were recorded for cell to the capacitance value of empty test cell. Typical oil test
each type of samples. cell value is estimated at (C = ~70pF) with ±0.1% accuracy.
C. Dielectric Constant, Tan Delta & Resistivity Test The dielectric constant of natural ester oils at several
temperatures ranging from 27°C to 90°C are shown in Fig. 2.
The dielectric constant, tan delta and resistivity factors
were measured using ADTR-2K PLUS. The tests were
conducted according to IEC 60247 standards [4].The
instrument was set at 500V AC and DC voltage were supplied
while the temperature was set from 30°C to 90°C with
increments of 10°C which correspond with the minimum
expected temperature (ambiance temperature) and maximum
expected temperature (overload condition). When samples
were excited with an AC source, the ADTR-2K PLUS
measured the voltage, capacitance and tan į while the DC
source measured the voltage and resistivity value of the
dielectric.

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Fig. 1 shows the result of the average AC breakdown
voltage between five different types of samples. It can be
observed that the highest AC breakdown voltage is gained by
the sunflower oil (99.4 kV) after the drying and filtering
processes and the lowest breakdown voltage value is gained
by the palm oil (33.2 kV) which is directly supplied by the
manufacturer. The average breakdown voltages for dried and
filtered oils as shown in Fig. 1 are higher compared to receive
oils. This is due to the elimination of unwanted contamination
particles and moisture which may affect the efficiency of the
oil samples [5][6]. The humidity in the insulating transformer
oils can affect the dielectric strength and eventually lead to
transformer failure. However, based on the results, the
breakdown voltages for all types of natural ester oils can be
considered as acceptable values according to the IEC 60156
standards [3].
Fig. 2. Comparison of Dielectric Constant of natural ester oils.
Fig. 2 show that the variation of dielectric constant of
natural ester oils to the temperature possesses the same
pattern. The dielectric constant of natural ester oils decreases
as the temperature increases. The dielectric constant values of
canola oil are relatively lower compared to other ester oil
which is 2.005 at 30oC and it drops to 1.863 at 90oC. However,
the rice bran oil has the highest dielectric constant followed by
the sunflower oil and palm oil which have almost the same
value.

55
 Overall, the value of dielectric constants decreases along
with temperature. The decreasing value of dielectric constant
shows the interaction between molecules becomes weaker as
temperature increases. It can be assumed that, as temperature
increases, the viscosity of oil decreases. The increase of
temperature also causes the increase in kinetic energy of the
moving segments leading to a greater randomness of motion
and thus, decreases the dipole orientation which results in
lower dielectric constant.
Fig. 3. Comparison of Dissipation Factor (Tan į) of natural ester oils.
The dissipation factor (tan į) measures the inefficiency of
insulating materials. Fig. 3 shows the comparison of
dissipation factor between five different types of natural ester
oil. As observed from the graph, the increase in temperature
from 30oC to 90oC resulted in a gradual increment of
dissipation factor. Thus, the temperature can influence the
dielectric material properties and an increment of dissipation
factor is an indication of oil ageing or oil contamination.
The higher value of tan į indicates the presence of
contaminants in the insulating oil. In most insulating systems,
the value of tan į will increase along with the increment in the
applied voltage or stress voltage. At high temperature,
oxidation may occur and this contributes to the conductivity
and dissipation factor. It can also be observed that at room
temperature up to 90oC, canola oil constantly shows the lowest
dissipation factor (0.0012 at 30oC to 0.0106 at 90oC) which
indicates high resistive property of the insulating material.
However, corn oil and rice bran oil tan į values have almost
the same reading and both can be considered to have good
insulator characteristics.
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Fig. 4. Comparison of Resistivity of natural ester oils.
Fig. 4 shows the resistivity of various natural ester oils at
different temperatures. It can be observed that canola oil is
constantly achieving the highest resistivity from 40oC and
above (from 7.3370 to 1.9604). For a good insulating material,
the resistivity of the insulating oil must be high at room
temperature and should have a good value at high temperature
as well. Generally, at room temperature ambiance, the highest
resistivity is gained by corn insulating oil (10.78), followed by
rice bran oil (9.655) and canola oil (9.634). The increasing
resistivity pattern reflects the low content of free ions and ion-
forming particles. It also normally indicates a low
concentration of conductive contaminants. Thus, resistivity is
one of the significant parameters in ensuring the quality of
transformer oil and also in increasing the efficiency of
transformer operation.
V. CONCLUSION
This present work focuses on the comparative study on the
electrical properties of insulating oil such as dielectric
constant, dissipation factor, and resistivity between five
different types of ester oils. However, electrical breakdown
voltage parameter is also significant to determine the ability of
some dielectric materials. Some experiments regarding the
humidity occurrence are being conducted in order to determine
the relationship between moisture and performance of
insulating oil. From the results, it is clear that dried and
filtered insulating oils have less risk of dielectric failure during
operation due to the elimination of moisture and unwanted
contaminations. The measurement of dielectric constant, tan į
and resistivity are parameters of electrical characteristics of
the insulating oil that can be used to monitor the quality of the
oil especially with regards to the deterioration and presence of
contaminant. From the dielectric properties experiments, it can
be concluded that canola oil is the most suitable oil to replace
mineral oil in transformer application. This is due to the
performance of canola oil with its high dielectric constant, low
dissipation factor value and high resistivity. In addition, based
on the entire dielectric property investigation, it was found that
the temperature of natural ester oil is directly proportional to
the dissipation factor and inversely proportional to the
dielectric strength. This may be related to the heat applied in
the dielectric material which affects the oil particles.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gracefully acknowledge the financial support
from the National Defence University of Malaysia under the
Research Grants (RAGS) Grant no.
RAGS/1/2014/TK03/UPNM/1.
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