Investigation of the Effect of Semi-conducting and Insulating Nanoparticles' Concentration on the Breakdown Voltage of Dielectric Nanofluids

In this paper, natural ester oil FR3™ is picked as matrix and three kinds of nanoparticles are inserted in weight percentage ratios ranging from 0.002%-0.012% (semi-conducting ZnO and SiC and insulating Al2O3), all of them with same diameters of 50 nm. The dielectric constant and electrical conductivity of the matrix and the nanoparticles are measured by employing the Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy technique in the range from 10– ¹ to 10 ⁶ Hz. AC breakdown voltage of all nanofluid samples, 12 in total, is measured and processed with adjustment to the Weibull distribution. The analysis proves that all nanofluid samples demonstrate their highest breakdown improvement at the same concentration, while it seems that the dielectric constant of the integrated nanoparticle plays a pivotal role to the performance maximization of the nanofluid.