Assessment of Eco-friendly Gases for Electrical Insulation to Replace the Most Potent Industrial Greenhouse Gas SF₆

Abstract

Gases for electrical insulation are essential for the operation of electric power equipment. This Review gives a brief history of gaseous insulation that involved the emergence of the most potent industrial greenhouse gas known today, namely sulfur hexafluoride. SF paved the way to space-saving equipment for the transmission and distribution of electrical energy. Its ever-rising usage in the electrical grid also played a decisive role in the continuous increase of atmospheric SF abundance over the last decades. This Review broadly covers the environmental concerns related to SF emissions and assesses the latest generation of eco-friendly replacement gases. They offer great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electrical equipment but at the same time involve technical trade-offs. The rumors of one or the other being superior seem premature, in particular because of the lack of dielectric, environmental, and chemical information for these relatively novel compounds and their dissociation products during operation.

Replacing SF6 in Electrical Gas-Insulated Switchgear: Technological Alternatives and Potential Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Savings in an EU-28 Perspective

“…Nevertheless, the comparison of UNFCCC reported data, which are predominantly a result of indirect accounting methods, with the results of the more generic modeling method, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) shows a large discrepancy. The EDGAR modeled, from 2000 until 2010, the SF 6 atmospheric emissions (up to version v4.2 FT2010 [54]) based on international annual technological statistics combined with geographical information systems modeling, in a more generic and transversal way than UNFCCC [55]. Similar to earlier accounts [55,56], we appreciate, in Figure S3 of the Supplementary Materials, that the EDGAR calculations are much more in line with empirically derived data.…”

Synthesis and dielectric properties of the eco-friendly insulating gas thiazyl trifluoride

“…4 In recent years, researchers have been committed to nding environmentally friendly alternatives to replace SF 6 ; these alternatives should have low GWP, high dielectric strength and low boiling point. 5,6 Signicant efforts have been made to study insulation gases, and many researchers have made great progress using substitutes such as peruorocarbons (e.g. c-C 4 F 8 , C 3 F 8 (ref.…”

Alternative Environmentally Friendly Insulating Gases for SF6

“…It was identified as one of the seven greenhouse gases in the Kyoto Protocol. It shows a remarkable absorption at infrared frequency and absorbs upward radiance 42,000 times more effectively than CO 2 , thus causing a great greenhouse effect [7]. The global warming potential (GWP) of SF 6 is 23,500 times higher than that of CO 2 over a 100 year integration time horizon according to the report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013, and its lifetime in the atmosphere reached to 850 years with an uncertainty range of 580-1400 years [8].…”