Oil Circuit Breaker

Mineral oil has better insulating property than air. In oil circuit breaker the fixed contact and moving contact are immerged inside the insulating oil. Whenever there is a separation of current carrying contacts in the oil, the arc is initialized at the moment of separation of contacts, and due to this arc the oil is vaporized and decomposed in mostly hydrogen gas and ultimately creates a hydrogen bubble around the arc. This highly compressed gas bubble around the arc prevents re-striking of the arc after current reaches zero crossing of the cycle. The Oil Circuit Breaker is the one of the oldest type of circuit breakers.

Operation

When the current carrying contacts in the oil are separated an arc is established in between the separated contacts. Actually, when separation of contacts has just started, distance between the current contacts is small as a result the voltage gradient between contacts becomes high. This high voltage gradient between the contacts ionized the oil and consequently initiates arcing between the contacts. This arc will produce a large amount of heat in surrounding oil and vaporizes the oil and decomposes the oil in mostly hydrogen and a small amount of methane, ethylene and acetylene. The hydrogen gas can not remain in molecular form and its is broken into its atomic form releasing lot of heat. The arc temperature may reach up to 5000oK. Due to this high temperature the gas is liberated surround the arc very rapidly and forms an excessively fast growing gas bubble around the arc. It is found that the mixture of gases occupies a volume about one thousand times that of the oil decomposed. From this figure we can assume how fast the gas bubble around the arc will grow in size. If this growing gas bubble around the arc is compressed by any means then rate of de – ionization process of ionized gaseous media in between the contacts will accelerate which rapidly increase the dielectric strength between the contacts and consequently the arc will be quenched at zero crossing of the current cycle. This is the basic operation of oil circuit breaker. In addition to that cooling effect of hydrogen gas surround the arc path also helps, the quick arc quenching in oil circuit breaker.

Types

There are mainly two types of oil circuit breakers available

Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker or BOCB

Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker or BOCB is such types of circuit breakers where oil is used as arc quenching media as well as insulating media between current carrying contacts and earthed parts of the breaker. The oil used here is same as transformer insulating oil.

Minimum Oil Circuit Breaker or MOCB

These types of circuit breakers utilize oil as the interrupting media. However, unlike bulk oil circuit breaker, a minimum oil circuit breaker places the interrupting unit in insulating chamber at live potential. The insulating oil is available only in interrupting chamber. The features of designing MOCB is to reduce requirement of oil, and hence these breaker are called minimum oil circuit breaker.

Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker

Construction of Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker

The basic construction of Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker is quite simple. Here all moving contacts and fixed contacts are immerged in oil inside closed iron vessel or iron tank. Whenever the current carrying contacts are being open within the oil the arc is produced in between the separated contacts. The large energy will be dissipated from the arc in oil which vaporizes the oil as well as decomposes it. Because of that a large gaseous pressure is developed inside the oil which tries to displace the liquid oil from surrounding of the contacts. The inner wall of the oil tank has to withstand this large pressure of the displaced oil. Thus the oil tank of bulk oil circuit breaker has to be sufficiently strong in construction. An air cushion is necessary between the oil surface and tank roof to accommodate the displaced oil when gas forms around the arc. That is why the oil tank is not totally filled up with oil it is filled up to certain level above which the air is tight in the tank. The breaker tank top cover should be securely bolted on the tank body and total breaker must be properly locked with foundation otherwise it may jump out during interruption of high fault current. In these type of equipment where expansible oil is enclosed in an air tight vessel (oil tank) there must be a gas vent fitted on the tank cover. Naturally some form of gas vent always is provided on the cover of bulk oil circuit breaker tank. This is very basic features for construction of Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker.