ABSTRACT
Electron spin resonance (ESR) study is carried out to characterize thermal endurance of insulating materials used in power cable industry. The presented work provides ESR investigation and evaluation of widely used cable insulation materials, namely polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE). The results confirm the fact that PVC is rapidly degrades than XLPE. The study also indicates that colorants and cable's manufacturing processes enhance the thermal resistance of the PVC. It also verifies the powerfulness and the importance of the ESR-testing of insulation materials compared to other tests assumed by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Standard 216-procedure, e.g. weight loss (WL), electric strength (ES) or tensile strength (TS). The estimated thermal endurance parameters by ESR-method show that the other standard methods overestimate these parameters and produce less accurate thermal life time curves of cable insulation materials.
Subject(s)
Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy/methods , Polyethylene/chemistry , Polyvinyl Chloride/chemistry , Cross-Linking Reagents/pharmacology , Electromagnetic Fields , Electrons , Equipment Failure Analysis , Hot Temperature , Materials Testing , Plastics/analysis , Polymers/chemistry , Temperature , Time FactorsABSTRACT
A photoacoustic (PA) spectrometer with high selectivity and sensitivity has been developed for trace gas analysis and for the detection of gas leak at part per trillion by volume (pptV) level. This PA system comprises of a resonant photoacoustic cell, a pulsed line tunable CO(2) laser as an excitation source and a sensitive electret microphone as a photoacoustic detector with an option to trigger the safety alarm system for early warning of gas leaks. In this work, three resonant PA cells with various geometries have been developed at our laboratory for the detection of photoacoustic signal using pulsed laser system and their comparative performance have been studied. As a special application of this PA system, the detection of sulfur hexa fluoride (SF(6)) gas using these three cells has been carried out for optimizing the sensitivity. Besides this, our PA system can very well be applied for pollution monitoring and detection of hazardous gases in a noisy environment.
