What are the applications of silicone rubber in the power industry?

1. Application of Silicone Rubber in Composite Insulators
At present, the main external insulation materials of transmission and transformation equipment are ceramics, EPDM, epoxy resin and silicone rubber. Silicone rubber has become the preferred insulating material for composite insulators because of its outstanding advantages in cracking resistance, hydrophobicity, pollution resistance, leakage resistance and corrosion resistance. Recent studies have found that adding a small amount of siloxane oligomer can give silicone rubber for composite insulators a stable and durable hydrophobic migration. When using siloxane oligomer with different degree of polymerization, the hydrophobic durability and aging resistance of silicone rubber are greatly improved, and the hydrophobic migration of samples after aging for 2500 h and 5000 h is basically not obvious. Significant changes.

2. Application of Silicone Rubber in Cable Accessories
All kinds of terminals and intermediate connectors in cable lines are collectively referred to as cable accessories. Cable accessories are necessary devices for connecting cables and equipment to realize power transmission. The application and development of silicone rubber in cable accessories have gone through three stages: heat shrinkage type, prefabricated type and cold shrinkage type. At present, most of the silicone rubber cable accessories sold in the market are cold-shrinkable. Silicone rubber for separatable shielded cable accessories of 10-35 kV line network not only has high insulation resistance, but also has good thermal conductivity, hydrophobicity and excellent mechanical properties when used continuously for more than 20 years at - 50-180 C. Thermal aging is an important factor affecting the operational reliability of silicone rubber for UHV cable accessories.

3. Application of Silicone Rubber in Anti-pollution Flash Coatings
The aggravation of environmental pollution reduces the insulation of transmission and transformation lines, which easily leads to pollution flashover accidents and serious losses. One of the current measures to prevent pollution flashover is to coat RTV silicone rubber coatings.  However, RTV silicone rubber coatings have been eroded by wind, sunshine, rain, discharge ablation for a long time in the course of use, resulting in cracking, peeling, erosion, hydrophobicity degradation, and pollution flashover due to failure to a certain extent. In order to further improve the performance of RTV silicone rubber coatings, a lot of studies have been carried out on the properties and influencing factors of silicone rubber for anti-pollution flashover coatings. It was found that the higher the content of silicon dioxide, the higher the thermal conductivity of silicone rubber, the stronger the resistance to electric trace and arc ablation. The hydrophobicity, oil resistance, flame retardancy and self-cleaning of the coatings could be significantly improved by adding nano-scale fumed silica and inorganic and organic compound flame retardants in the formulation. With the addition of fluorine atoms, the coating has low surface energy, and the ice has little adhesion on its surface. It can fall off under the action of natural force and play an anti-icing role.

With the deepening of research and the continuous improvement of product performance, silicone rubber will be more and more widely used in the power industry, especially in composite insulators, cold shrinkable cable accessories, transformers, transformers, anti-pollution flashover coatings and other fields.