Study on the Influence Mechanism of Trace H2O on SF6 Thermal Decomposition Characteristic Components

To explore the influence mechanism of trace H2O on SF6 decomposition characteristics under partial thermal fault and establish the foundation of using SF6 thermal decomposition principle to diagnose the thermal fault of SF6 electrical equipment, a series of artificial thermal fault decomposition experiments with different H2O concentrations were conducted on the designed SF6 thermal decomposition experimental system. A trace water injector was used to control the content of trace H2O accurately and gas chromatograph, chromatography-mass spectrometry as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to measure decomposed components. Finally, the thermal decomposition characteristic under 340 degrees C was achieved. The analysis results indicate no matter how much H2O content is, SF6 can decomposes into many kinds of decomposition characteristics, such as CO2, SOF2, SO2, SOF4, SO2F2, H2S, HF. The concentrations of all these decomposition characteristics increase with the time extended, but change differently with the increase of H2O content, because H2O plays different role in the formation process of each decomposition characteristic components. The variation of H2O content not only affects the production of the decomposition characteristic components, but also makes SO2 and HF gradually evolved into the main characteristic components of SF6 thermal decomposition. In addition, the higher the H2O content is, the stronger the promoting effect on SO2 and HF is.