Improving the thermal performance of electrical transformers using hybrid mixture of (transformer oil, nanoparticles, and PCM)

In this paper, an experimental electrical distribution transformer was studied and a new technique was proposed to improve the performance of a new mixed cooling consisting of pure transformer oil, paraffin wax and nanoparticles. The experiment was carried out on a small transformer that was done by taking a model with dimensions (15 * 10 * 10) cm to facilitate calculations. Paraffin wax absorbs the heat generated in the transformer due to the smelting process that can be used to cool electrical appliances. Nanoparticles have good thermal properties and lead to increased oil insulation to thermal improvements in transformer oil with dispersal of solid nanoparticles and their effects on transformer cooling. Three types of solid nanoparticles were used in this experiment (Al2O3, TiO2, and Sic) with a different volume concentration (1%, 3%, and 5%) and 4% paraffin wax as a certified added percentage for each process. The obtained results showed that when mixing paraffin wax and solid nanoparticles with transformer oil, the transformer cooling performance is improved by reducing the temperature. The best selected nanoparticles were found to be Sic and the reason for this is that Sic has a higher thermal conductivity compared to (Al2O3 and TiO2). The proposed hybrid oil reduces the temperature by 10 ° C (in the case of PCM and Sic) and it is possible to improve the cooling performance of electrical transformers.