Degradation of electrical insulating paper monitored with high performance liquid chromatography

The degradation of electrical kraft paper under carefully controlled laboratory experiments is being examined in order to find correlations between the change in dielectric and mechanical properties and the increase in concentration of furan compounds in the oil. These correlations could be valuable for assessing the extent of degradation of paper insulation in operating HV equipment. Preliminary investigation has shown that the concentration of furan compounds in mineral oil can be determined relatively easily using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). While some of these compounds are themselves unstable, three have been found which are worth monitoring to correlate with the tensile and dielectric properties of the paper. Useful trends have been obtained, and further investigation is taking place to obtain clear cut correlation of practical value for monitoring the condition of actual transformers