Assessing the Production and Loss of Electrons from Conduction Currents in Mineral Oil

Abstract

The evaluation of the high-field generation and loss of charged carriers is a key step to simulate any prebreakdown process in a dielectric liquid. Currently, the electron generation in mineral oil has been widely described in terms of “electric-field-dependent molecular ionization” and the electron loss is estimated using a fixed attachment time constant. This paper reports our next step towards the quantitative characterization of the production and loss of electrons in mineral oil. In this step, the electrical conduction measurements are performed in mineral oil for a needle-plane configuration (tip radius ~3 μm) and submicrometric gap distances (ranging between 10 to 100 μm). Conduction currents in negative polarity are reported from 10-12 to 10-7A, from the ohmic to the space-charge limited regimes. In order to check the validity of existing simulation models for mineral oil, computer simulation is used to calculate the VI characteristic in the liquid considering electrohydrodynamic (EHD) motion. It is shown that the active zone where electrons are produced in front of the needle is around 10 μm long. Furthermore, it is found that electrons travel a similar distance before they attach into ions. It is also shown that the currents are grossly misestimated when parameters proposed in the literature to model generation and loss of electrons in mineral oil are used.