Wholesale sf6 circuit breaker in Chad

In this technique, the pressure rise is obtained mainly by gas compression. The first high-voltage SF6 circuit-breaker with a high short-circuit current capability was produced by Westinghouse in 1959. This dead tank circuit-breaker could interrupt 41.8 kA under 138 kV (10,000 MV·A) and 37.6 kA under 230 kV (15,000 MV·A).

In 1957, the puffer-type technique was introduced for SF6 circuit breakers, wherein the relative movement of a piston and a cylinder linked to the moving part is used to generate the pressure rise necessary to blast the arc via a nozzle made of insulating material (Figure 1).

It is now possible to use low energy spring-loaded mechanisms to drive high-voltage circuit-breakers up to 800 kV. The first patents on the use of SF6 as an interrupting medium were filed in Germany in 1938 by Vitaly Grosse (AEG) and independently later in the United States in July 1951 by H. J. Lingal, T. E. Browne and A. P. Storm (Westinghouse).

Current interruption in a high-voltage circuit-breaker is obtained by separating two contacts in a medium, such as sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), having excellent dielectric and arc-quenching properties. After contact separation, current is carried through an arc and is interrupted when this arc is cooled by a gas blast of sufficient intensity.

This dead tank circuit-breaker could interrupt 41.8 kA under 138 kV (10,000 MV·A) and 37.6 kA under 230 kV (15,000 MV·A). This performance was already significant, but the three chambers per pole and the high pressure source needed for the blast (1.35 MPa) was a constraint that had to be avoided in subsequent developments.