MOISTURE REMOVAL FROM THE POLLUTED TRANSFORMER OIL IN RECTANGULAR SEPARATORS
Today, transformers are one of the main elements in a power supply system, allowing converting the voltage of electric current. These devices are among the most expensive elements in the power supply system, therefore, extending the life of transformers is an extremely urgent problem. As practice has shown, one of the main provisions in the maintenance of a transformer is an annual check of oil. In this paper, the authors conducted studies on the removal of moisture from the insulating oil of a transformer. A new cleaning apparatus has been developed to remove various impurities and moisture from the oil. It is proposed to use a rectangular separator to remove moisture and impurities from it, which have excellent density from transformer oil. The advantages of the developed rectangular separator are presented. To calculate the process of removing moisture from insulating transformer oil, a multiphase Eulerian-Eulerian model of Volume of Fluid was used with a number of phases equal to two in the ANSYS Fluent software package. The calculation of the efficiency of purification of transformer oil from water. Numerical studies have shown that with proper selection of the geometric dimensions of the apparatus, the use of a rectangular separator to remove moisture from transformer oil allows it to be cleaned from water by 99.99%. The process of separation of water-oil emulsion is considered. It was revealed that the density of the oil is less than the density of water, after the process of separation of the emulsion, it rushed to the bottom of the apparatus, where it was removed from the separator through special holes made. In the course of research, it was found that using a rectangular separator at input speeds of a water-oil emulsion in the range of 1-2 m/s allows it to be cleaned from water at 99.99% with a device height and a distance between rows of U-shaped elements equal to 50 and 30 mm, respectively. It is revealed that the use of the developed rectangular separator can be an alternative to the use of settlers, various separators and other cleaning devices in which the cleaning rate of contaminated waste oils is extremely low. The presented separator allows removing moisture from transformer oil at a rate of 1-2 m/s with an efficiency of 99.99%.