INVESTIGATION OF THE GROWTH OF WATER TREES IN XLPE CABLES

ACTIVITY ON 14/4/10

If u guys still remember, my last entry about CBM i mentioned about water tree right?? so, this entry i will discuss more details about the process to investigate the water tree.

water tree is a phenomena happened inside undeground cable which cannot be see with our naked eye. there for we used the microscop to check the existence of water tree.

Procedures :

1st : this is a pure cable from underground. this cable was taken after diagnostic team do the cable maintenances at certain area

2nd : chopped cable



3rd : take off the jacket

4th : slicer machine

5th : the white cable is the insulation material (in this case they used XLPE insulation). the amputation process cannot be handle by using the normal cutter because its dangerous the person who do it. (silap haribulan tepotong jari)

6th : this is what the slicer machine did. (now u know how difficult to do it manually right?)

7th : slicing of the sampe cable to thin slices

8th : this is the overall sliced cable

9th : dyeing process.

this process is just to colour the plain cable in order to enhance the visibility of these water trees. btw, the cables are soak in the Fluid Methlene Blue

10th : this is water bath. need to boil the water until the temperature reach 60 degree celcius

11th : put the immersing cable into the water bath and cook it for about 4 hours

after 4 hours, take out the cable and dry it. then, use the microscope to see the water trees existence. thare 2 types of water tree : bow-tie tree and bush tree (u can refer to the CBM entry)

Experiment prepared by : En. Jamal & En. Saiedin (thanks to both of them for inviting me to join them doing the experiment )