Title: Elucidation for Electro-chemical Degradation of Cross-linked Polyethylene Insulated Power Cable
Abstract: The water treeing phenomenon has been recognized as an ultimate difficulty for long-term service life of cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) insulated power cables. Elucidation of substantial mechanistic pathway of water treeing is quite important to suppress water treeing. Many factors which affect water treeing have been found, such as electrical stress, existence of water, temperature and mechanical stress, and somewhat complicated synergestic interaction between them has also been pointed out. These factors make water treeing very difficult to be understood.The author studied the role of water in this phenomenon. To obtain certain analogical evidence for water treeing, a series of experiments was conducted by employing, as substituents of water, several organic solvents which possess relatively high dielectric constant and dissimilar electrochemical behavior, respectively.Consequently, it was found that a new type of treeing in XLPE matrix could be generated by certain organic solvent without water, and such treeing became easier to incept and propagate when the solvent contained particular electrolyte. Further, it was also indicated that cation was more effective than anion on such solvent treeing. Water tree inception and propagation mechanism was discussed from these experimental results.