On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 03:51:22PM -0700, James Irving wrote:
> File this under things no one ever told you.
>
> Many years ago I spent several years as a technician for a very large
> organization. We specialized in testing advanced concepts, many of
> which became very warm due to the power and extremely high voltages.
>
> Large tubes were immersed in very large water jackets for cooling.
> These were fed by very large pulse transformers with very large
> insulators that had a constant corona around them during operation.
> One night, about 2am, one of the oil-filled transformers developed
> a pinhole leak. There were no fatalities, but the explosion and
> resulting fires destroyed millions of dollars of equipment, plus it
> put the lives of several hundreds people in jeopardy.
>
> The final report issued about a year later said, among other things;
> 1) No one had tested the oil to see what happened to it in the
> presents of a HV corona, and 2) The oil broke down into a number of
> its constituents, one of which was hydrogen.
>
> Go with the water. It may be more labor intensive, but its a lot
> safer.
Oil cooling is discussed in this article, too:
<http://mikea.ath.cx/check-the-oil.html>
and sounds like something without which I could do very nicely, though
the hardware used to check the oil could make a very nice toy.
Other stories are to be found at
<http://mikea.ath.cx/indexa.html#stories>, and I'm constantly on the
look-out for more. Contributions are solicited.
Yes, water does sound easier and safer than any flammable oil. Perhaps a
silicone oil would be safer than some flammable coolant, but it, too, is
more difficult to work with, harder to get, more expensive, and has the
risk of being more interesting in the event of a leak or the need to
replace the cooling medium.
--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mikea@mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin
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