Evaluation on current interruption ability of CO2 and SF6 using current and voltage application highly controlled by power semiconductors

摘要

This paper reports a new simple test technique to evaluate current interruption ability of arc quenching gases. In the test, current and voltage applied to the arc was controlled using a insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). Switching the IGBT enables us to produce free recovery conditions for a fundamental arc decay in nozzles. In addition to this, a voltage was intentionally applied to the free recovery arcs between the electrodes by switching-off IGBT again at the specified delay time td. This applied voltage is called quasi transient recovery voltage (quasi-TRV). We can evaluate successful interruption or interruption failure by measuring the current between the electrodes after quasi-TRV application. We compared the interruption ability of SF6 and CO2 through this developed technique. The experimental results show that a residual arc in SF6 gas flow decays four times more rapidly than that in CO2 gas flow. Influence of observation holes in the nozzles used in the experiments was also investigated, showing less influence of observation on the arc behavior. © 2015 IEEE.