Environmental Effects of SF6 Gas, and its use in Electric Power Industry

Because of excellent insulation and are quenching properties, Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was considered as the most suitable gas for use in electric industry. A tremendous growth of SF6 based Circuit Breakers and Substations continued from late seventies up to 1993, when it was suddenly declared as 25,000 time more potent as compared to CO2, which is a major contributor to Green House Effect causing global warming. This effect and the high cost of SF6 prompted researchers to investigate about its behaviour in a mixture with other insulating gases such as Air, N2 etc so that a low cost, environment friendly insulation system be made feasible. Keeping in view the rising trend in the use of SF6 (which will be released in atmosphere sooner or later) and its potentiality of influencing the environment, an effort has been made in the present work to analyse various mixtures of SF6 with different environment friendly insulating gases. This work is a step in the direction of meeting the emission norms suggested by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Kyoto (Japan) in 1997, also known as Kyoto Protocol.

Keywords:

SF6 , Green House Gases , Environmental Effects , Kyoto Protocol