Fabrication and investigation of local clay-based insulators for high voltage applications

Abstract

Nigeria has a large deposit of clay which is the major raw material for the fabrication of porcelain insulators for high voltage applications.However, the country depends largely on imported porcelain insulators to meet its high voltage needs even in the face of the worsening exchange rate of the Nigerian currency compared to the US dollar and other foreign currencies.As a result, it becomes necessary to sort for local means of fabricating high voltage pin insulators from locally available raw materials.In this study, clay sourced from three different geographical locations (Auchi, Ikorodu, and Ota) are used to fabricate three samples of high voltage insulators.The fourth sample of insulator is also fabricated from the Ota clay with Plaster of Paris (POP) as an additive to enhance workability.The physical and electrical properties of the insulator samples are investigated and compared with imported porcelain insulators.The results show that the insulator fabricated using the clay from Auchi has the highest breakdown voltage of 5 kV and lowest leakage current of 2 mA and thus can be adopted for low-tension insulation instead of the high-tension insulation speculated from the onset of the research.