Power System

Circuit Breakers and Substations

Lecture No. 4
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Lahore

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 1

Oil Circuit Breakers

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 2

Oil Circuit Breakers
• The oil circuit breaker was initially designed for high power
applications.
• This circuit breaker was designed and built by J. N. Kelman in 1901.
• The circuit breaker was installed on a 40 kV system that was capable
of delivering a maximum short circuit current of 200 to 300 amperes.
• Records indicate that the circuit breaker was in service from April
1902 until March of 1903, when following a number of circuit
interruptions, at short time intervals, heated oil was spewed over on
the surrounding woodwork, starting a fire which eventually spread to
the power house.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 3
Oil Circuit Breakers
• The design of this circuit breaker was extremely simple.
• It consisted of two wooden barrels filled with a combination of water and
oil.
• The contacts consisted of two vertical blades connected at the top and
arranged so that they would drop into the stationary contacts to close the
circuit.
• From these relatively humble beginnings the oil circuit breaker was refined
and improved but throughout all these mutations it maintained its
characteristic simplicity of construction and its capability for interrupting
large currents.
• Oil circuit breakers were widely used and presently there are many still in
service
• However, they have been made obsolete by the new SF6 technology.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 4
Properties of Insulating Oil
• The type of oil used oil circuit breakers is one where naphthenic base
petroleum oils have been carefully refined to avoid sludge or corrosion that
may be produced by sulfur or other contaminants.
• The resulting insulating oil is identified as type 10-C transformer oil.
• It is characterized by an excellent dielectric strength, by a good thermal
conductivity (2.7 × 104 cal/sec cm ᴼC) and by a high thermal capacity (0.44
cal/gm ᴼC).
• Some designs of oil circuit breakers take advantage of the excellent
dielectric withstand capabilities of oil and use the oil not only as
interrupting medium but also as insulation within the live parts of the
circuit breaker and to ground.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 5

Properties of Insulating Oil
• Insulating oil at standard atmospheric conditions, and for a given contact gap, is far
superior than air or SF6 under the same conditions
• However, oil can be degraded by small quantities of water and by carbon deposits that
are the result of the carbonization of the oil. The carbonization takes place due to the
contact of the oil with the electric arc.
• The purity of the oil usually can be judged by its clarity and transparency.
• Fresh oil has a clear amber color [range of yellow-orange-brown-red colors], while
contaminated oil is darkened and there are some black deposits that show signs of
carbonization.
• The condition of the oil normally is evaluated by testing for its withstand capability.
• The tests are made using a spherical spark gap with two spheres 20 mm in diameter and
at a gap of 3 mm.
• Fresh oil should have a dielectric capability greater than 35 kV.
• For used oil, it is generally recommended that this capability be no less than 15 kV.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 6

Current Interruption in Oil
• When an arc is drawn in oil, the contacting
oil surfaces are rapidly vaporized due to
the high temperature of the arc in the
range of 5,000 to 1 5,000°K.
• The vaporized gas then forms a gas
bubble, which totally surrounds the arc.
• The approximate composition of this
bubble is 60 to 80% hydrogen, 20%
acetylene (C2H2) and the remainder
consists of smaller proportions of
methane and other gases.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 7

Current Interruption in Oil
• Within the gas bubble, there are three easily identifiable zones.
• In the innermost zone, which contains the dissociated gases and is the one in
direct contact with the arc. The temperature drops to between 500 to 800
Kelvin.
• This gaseous zone is surrounded by a vapor zone where the vapor is
superheated in its inside layers and is saturated at the outside layers.
• The final identifiable zone is one of boiling liquid where at the outside
boundary the temperature of the liquid is practically equal to the relative
ambient temperature.
• Hydrogen is probably the ideal gas for interruption, but the
complications for the safe handling of the gas and cost of a gas
recovery system combine to make its application impractical.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 8

Current Interruption in Oil
• Comparatively, the dielectric strength of hydrogen is not particularly
high, its re-ignition voltage is 5 to 10 times higher than that of air.
• Hydrogen also has a very high thermal conductivity that is faster
during the period of gas dissociation, which results in a more rapid
cooling and deionizing of the arc.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 9

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 10

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• Plain Break Oil Circuit Breakers
• In the earlier designs of oil circuit breakers, the interrupters
consisted of only a plain break and no consideration was given to
include special devices to contain the arc or to enhance the arc
extinguishing process.
• In those early designs, the arc was merely confined within the
walls of a rather large oil tank and deionization was accomplished
by
• elongation of the arc,
• by the increased pressure produced by the heating of the oil in the arc
region and
• by the natural turbulence that is set by the heated oil.
• To attain a successful interruption, under these conditions, it is
necessary to develop a comparatively long arc. Plain Break OCBs
• However, long arcs are difficult to control, and in most cases, this
leads to long periods of arcing.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 11

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• The random combinations of long arcs, which translate into high arc
voltages, accompanied by long arcing times make unpredictable the
amount of arc energy that has to be handled by the circuit breaker.
• This unpredictability presents a problem because it is not possible to
design a device that can handle such a wide and non-well-defined
range of energy.
• Plain break oil circuit breakers were generally limited on their
application to 15 kV systems and maximum fault currents of only
about 200 amperes.
• Moreover, these circuit breakers were good only in those situations
where the rate of rise of the recovery voltage was low.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 12
Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• Explosion Chamber
• The development of the explosion chamber, or interrupting pot,
constituted a significant breakthrough for oil circuit breakers.
• It led to the designs of the so called "suicide breakers."
• Basically, the only major change made on the plain circuit breaker
design was the addition of the explosion pot, which is a cylindrical
container fabricated from a mechanically strong insulating material.
• This cylindrical chamber is mounted in such a way as to fully enclose
the contact structure.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 13

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• At the bottom of the chamber, there is an orifice through which the
moving contact rod is inserted.
• The arc is drawn across the contacts, but now it is contained inside
the interrupting pot.
• The hydrogen bubble is also contained inside the chamber.
• As the contacts continue to move and whenever the moving contact
rod separates itself from the orifice at the bottom of the chamber, an
exit similar to a nozzle becomes available for exhausting the hydrogen
that is trapped inside the interrupting chamber.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 14

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers

Outline of an explosion chamber

type of oil interrupter.
a. Contacts closed.
b. Arc is initiated as contacts move.
c. Gas escapes through interrupter
pot opening.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 15
Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• Disadvantages
• One of the disadvantages of this design is its sensitivity to the point
on the current wave where the moving contact rod is separated from
the interrupter chamber.
• If the first current zero occurs too early before the contact leaves the
bottom orifice, then the interrupter must wait for the next current
zero which may come a relatively long time after the contact has left
the pot.
• Consequently, when the pressure inside the pot has decayed to an
ineffective value due to the venting through the bottom orifice.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 16
Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• Another drawback of this interrupter chamber is its dependency on
current magnitude.
• At high values of current, the corresponding generated pressure is high and
may even reach levels that would result in the destruction of the chamber.
• Sometimes. the high pressure has a beneficial quasi-balancing effect
because the high pressure tends to reduce the arc length and the
interrupting time, thus decreasing the arc energy input.
• However, with lower values of current, the opposite occurs, the generated
pressures are low and the arcing times increase until a certain critical range
of current, reached where it is difficult to achieve interruption.
• This current level is commonly identified as the "critical current."

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 17

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• To Overcome Drawbacks
• Pressure relief devices are included to limit the pressure
due to the high currents.
• For the low current problem, the impulse circuit breaker
was developed.
• This design concept provides a piston pump intended to
squirt oil into the contacts at the precise time when
interruption is taking place.
• To reduce the sensitivity to the contact position at
current zero, the cross baffle interrupter chamber design
was created.
• This design rapidly gained popularity and it became the
preferred design for all the later vintage oil circuit
breakers. Cross baffle
interrupter chamber
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 18
Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• The design consists of a number of specially designed insulated
plates that are stacked together to form a passage for the arc
that is alternately restricted and then laterally vented.
• This design permits the lateral venting of the pressure
generated inside of the chamber.
• This arrangement subjects the arc to a continuous strong cross
flow which has proven to be beneficial for extinguishing the
arc.
• Further developments of the interrupting chambers led to
some designs that incorporated cross blast patterns, while
others included what is known as compensating chambers
where an intermediate contact is used to establish the arc
sequentially. Oil circuit breaker
• The first contact draws the arc in an upper chamber which interrupting chamber
preheats the oil prior to opening the second contact. showing lateral vents.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 19

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers
• A typical relationship
between the arcing time
as a function of the
interrupted current and as
a function of the system
voltage was established
by F. Kesselring and is
shown in Figure.

Oil circuit breaker arcing time as function

of current at constant voltage.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 20

Types of Oil Circuit Breakers

Oil circuit breaker arcing time as function of voltage at constant current

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 21

Bulk Oil Circuit Breakers
• The main distinguishing characteristic of bulk oil circuit breaker types is the
fact that these circuit breakers use the oil not only as the interrupting
medium but also as the primary means to provide electrical insulation.
• The original plain break oil circuit breakers obviously belonged to the bulk
oil circuit breaker type.
• Later, the newly developed interrupting chambers were fitted to the
existing plain break circuit breakers.
• In many cases, at voltages that generally extended up to 72.5 kV, all three
poles were enclosed into a single tank of oil.
• However, a number of circuit breakers in the medium voltage range had
three independent tanks, as did those circuit breakers with voltage ratings
greater than 145 kV.
• The three poles were operated by a single operating mechanism.
Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 22
Bulk Oil Circuit Breakers
• To meet the insulating needs of the equipment, and depending on
the magnitude of the application voltage, adequate distances must be
provided between the live parts of the device and the grounded tank
containing the insulating oil.
• Consequently, this type of design required large tanks and large
volumes of oil,
• for example, for a 145 kV circuit breaker approximately 12,000 liters, or about
3,000 gallons of oil were required, and for a 230 kV circuit beaker the volume
was increased to 50,000 liters, or approximately 13,000 gallons.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 23

Bulk Oil Circuit Breakers
• Not only the size of the circuit breakers was very large but also the
foundation pads where the circuit breakers were mounted had to be
big and quite strong.
• In order to withstand the impulse forces developed during
interruption, it is usually required that the pad be capable of
supporting a force equal to up to 4 times the
weight of the circuit breaker including the weight of the oil.
• This is in the case of 245 kV circuit breaker amounted to a force of
about 50 tons.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 24

Minimum Oil Circuit Breakers
• Because of the need to reduce space
requirements and the scarcity and high
cost of oil, a type of circuit breaker that
used very small volumes of oil was
developed.
• This circuit breaker is known as
minimum oil, low oil content, or oil
poor circuit breaker.

Minimum oil circuit breaker.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 25
Minimum Oil Circuit Breakers
• Difference
• The main difference between the minimum oil and the bulk oil circuit breakers is
that minimum oil circuit breakers use oil only for the interrupting function while a
solid insulating material is used for dielectric purposes, as opposed to bulk oil
circuit breakers where oil serves both purposes.
• In minimum oil circuit breakers, a small oil filled, arc interrupting chamber
is supported within hollow insulators.
• These insulators are generally fabricate from reinforced fiberglass for medium
voltage applications and from porcelain for the higher voltages.
• The use of insulating supports effectively qualify this design as a live tank
circuit breaker.
• By separating the live parts from ground by means of the insulating support, the
volume of oil required is greatly decreased.

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 26

Thank You

Engr. Raheel Muzzammel 27