Air Blast
Air Blast
Air Blast
Advantages
(i) The risk of fire is eliminated.
(ii) The arcing products are completely removed by the blast ,the
expense of regular oil replacement is avoided.
(iii) The growth of dielectric strength is so rapid that final
contact gap needed for arc extinction is very small.
This reduces the size of the device.
(iv) The arcing time is very small due to the rapid build up of
dielectric strength between contacts. Therefore, the arc
energy is only a fraction of that in oil circuit breakers,
thus resulting in less burning of contacts.
(v) Due to lesser arc energy, air-blast circuit breakers are
very suitable for conditions where frequent operation is
required.
(vi) The energy supplied for arc extinction is obtained from
high pressure air and is independent of the current to be
interrupted.
Disadvantages.
The use of air as the arc quenching medium offers the
following disadvantages :
(i) The air has relatively inferior arc extinguishing properties.
(ii) The air-blast circuit breakers are very sensitive to the
variations in the rate of rise of restriking voltage.
(iii) Considerable maintenance is required for the
compressor plant which supplies the air-blast.
The air blast circuit breakers are finding wide applications in
high voltage installations. Majority of the circuit breakers for
voltages beyond 110 kV are of this type.
Types of Air Blast Circuit Breakers