What is a Circuit Breaker?

Electrical circuit breaker is a switching device which can be operated

automatically or manually for protecting and controlling of electrical
power system. In the modern power system the design of the circuit
breaker has changed depending upon the huge currents and to
prevent from arc while operating.

Figure 1

Electricity which is coming to the houses or offices or schools or

industries or to any other places from the power distribution grids
forms a large circuit. Those lines which are connected to the power
plant forming at one end is called the hot wire and the other lines
connecting to ground forming other end. Whenever the electrical
charge flows between these two lines it develops potential between
them. For the complete circuit the connection of loads (appliances)
offers resistance to the flow of charge and the whole electrical
system inside the house or industries will work smoothly.

They work smoothly as long as the appliances have sufficiently

resistant and do not cause any over current or voltage. The reasons
for heating up the wires are too much charge flowing through the
circuit or short circuiting or sudden connection of the hot end wire to
the ground wire would heat up the wires, causing fire. The circuit
breaker will prevent such situations which simply cut off the
remaining circuit.

Different Types of Circuit Breakers

The different types of high voltage circuit breakers which includes
the following

 Air Circuit Breaker

 SF6 Circuit Breaker
 Vacuum Circuit Breaker
 Oil Circuit Breaker
 Air Circuit Breaker

Air Circuit Breaker

This circuit breaker will operate in the air; the quenching medium is
an Arc at atmospheric pressure. In many of the countries air circuit
breaker is replaced by oil circuit breaker. About oil circuit breaker we
will discuss later in the article. Thus the importance of ACB is still
preferable choice to use an Air circuit breaker up to 15KV. This is
because; oil circuit breaker may catch fire when used at 15V

The two types of air circuit breakers are

 Plain air circuit breaker

 Air blast Circuit Breaker
Plain Air Circuit Breaker
Plain air circuit breaker is also called as Cross-Blast Circuit Breaker.
In this, the circuit breaker is fitted with a chamber which basically
surrounds the contacts. This chamber is known as arc chute.
 Plain Air Circuit
Breaker
This arc is made to drive in it. In achieving the cooling of the air
circuit breaker, an arc chute will help. From the refractory material,
an arc chute is made. The internal walls of arc chute are shaped in
such a way that arc is not forced into close proximity. It will drive
into the winding channel projected on an arc chute wall.

The arc chute will have many small compartments and has many
divisions which are metallic separated plates. Here each of small
compartments behaves as a mini arc chute and metallic separation
plate acts like arc splitters. All arc voltages will be higher than the
system voltage when the arc will split into a series of arcs. It is only
preferable for low voltage application.

Air Blast Circuit Breaker

Air blast circuit breakers are used for system voltage of 245 KV, 420
KV and also even more.Air blast circuit breakers are of two types:

 Axial blast breaker

 Axial blast with sliding moving contact.
Axial Blast Breaker
In the axial blaster breaker the moving contact of the axial blast
breaker will be in contact. The nozzle orifice is a fixed to the contact
of a breaker at a normal closed condition. A fault occurs when high
pressure is introduced into the chamber. Voltage is sufficient to
sustain high-pressure air when flowed through nozzle orifice.

Axial
Blast Circuit breaker
Advantages of Air-Blast Circuit Beaker
 It is used where frequent operation is required because of
lesser arc energy.
 It is risk free from fire.
 Small in size.
 It requires less maintenance.
 Arc quenching is much faster
 Speed of circuit breaker is much higher.
 The time duration of the arc is same for all values of current.
Disadvantages of Air-Blast Circuit Breaker
 It requires additional maintenance.
 The air has relatively lower arc extinguishing properties
 It contains high capacity air compressor.
 From the air pipe junction there may be a chance of air
pressure leakage
 There is the chance of a high rate rise of re-striking current
and voltage chopping.
Application and Uses of Air Circuit Breaker
 It is used for protection of plants, electrical machines,
transformers, capacitors and generators
 Air circuit breaker is also used in the Electricity sharing system
and GND about 15Kv
 Also used in Low as well as High Currents and voltage
applications.
SF6 Circuit Breaker
In the SF6 circuit breaker the current carrying contacts operate in
sulphur hexafluoride gas is known as an SF6 circuit breaker. It is an
excellent insulating property and high electro-negativity. It can be
understood that, high affinity of absorbing free electron. The
negative ion is formed when a free electron collides with the SF6 gas
molecule; it is absorbed by that gas molecule. The two different
ways of attachment of electron with SF6 gas molecules are

SF6 + e = SF6
SF6 + e = SF5- + F

SF6 Circuit Breaker

The negative ions which are formed will be much heavier than a free
electron. Therefore, when compared with other common gases
overall mobility of the charged particle in the SF6 gas is much less.
The mobility of charged particles is majorly responsible for
conducting current through a gas. Hence, for heavier and less
mobile charged particles in SF6 gas, it acquires very high dielectric
strength. This gas good heat transfer property because of low
gaseous viscosity. SF6 is 100 times more effective in arc quenching
media than air circuit breaker. It is used for both medium and high
voltage electrical power system from 33KV to 800KV.

Types of SF6 Circuit Breaker

 Single interrupter SF6 circuit breaker applied up to 220
 Two interrupter SF6 circuit breaker applied up to 400
 Four interrupter SF6 circuit breaker applied up to 715V
Vacuum Circuit Breaker
A Vacuum circuit breaker is a circuit which vacuum is used to extinct
the arc. It has dielectric recovery character, excellent interruption
and can interrupt the high frequency current which results from arc
instability, superimposed on the line frequency current.

Vacuum Circuit Breaker

In the principle of operation of VCB will have two contacts called
electrodes will remain closed under normal operating conditions.
Suppose when a fault occurs in any part of the system, then the trip
coil of the circuit breaker gets energized and finally contact 聽 gets
separated.
The moment contacts of the breaker are opened in vacuum, i.e. 10-
7 to 10-5 Torr an arc is produced between the contacts by the
ionization of metal vapors of contacts. Here the arc quickly gets
extinguished, this happens because the electrons, metallic vapors
and ions produced during arc, condense quickly on the surface of
the CB contacts, resulting in quick recovery of dielectric strength.

Advantages
 VCBs are reliable, compact and long life
 They can interrupt any fault current.
 There will be no fire hazards.
 No noise is produced
 It has higher dielectric strength.
 It requires less power for control operation.
Oil Circuit Breaker
In this type of circuit breaker oil is used, but mineral oil is preferable.
It acts better insulating property than air. The moving contact and
fixed contact are immerged inside the insulating oil. When the
separation of current takes place, then carrier contacts in the oil, the
arc in circuit breaker is initialized at the moment of separation of
contacts, and because of this arc in the oil is vaporized and
decomposed in hydrogen gas and finally creates a hydrogen bubble
around the arc.

This highly compressed gas bubble around and arc prevents re-
striking of the arc after current reaches zero crossing of the cycle.
The OCB is the oldest type of circuit breakers.

Different types of Oil Circuit Breaker

 Bulk oil circuit breaker
 Minimum oil circuit breaker
Bulk Oil Circuit Breaker (BOCB)
In the BOCB, oil is used to arc the quenching media and also for
insulating media in between earth parts of circuit breaker and
current carrying contacts. The same transformer insulating oil is
used.
The working principle of the BOCB says when the current carrying
contacts in the oil are separated, then an arc is generated between
the separated contacts. The arc which is established will produce
rapid growing gas bubble around the arc. The moving contacts will
move away from the fixed contact of arc and this result the
resistance of the arc gets increased. Here the increased resistance
will cause the lowering the temperature. Hence the reduced
formations of gasses surround the arc.

BOCB
Circuit Breaker
When the current passes through zero crossing the arc quenching in
the BOCB takes places. In the totally air tight vessel, the gas bubble
is enclosed inside the oil. The oil will surround with high pressure on
the bubble, this results in highly compressed gas around the arc.
When the pressure is increased the de- ionization of the gas also
increases, which results in arc quenching. The hydrogen gas will
help in cooling the arc quenching in the oil circuit breaker.

Advantages
 Good cooling property because of decomposition
 Oil has high dielectric strength
 It acts like an insulator between earth and live parts.
 The oil used here will absorb arc energy while decomposing
Disadvantages
 It will not permit high speed of interruption
 It takes long arcing time.
Minimum Oil Circuit Breaker
It is a circuit breaker which utilizes oil as the interrupting media. The
minimum oil circuit breaker will place the interrupting unit in an
insulating chamber at the live potential. But insulating material is
available in interrupting chamber. It requires less amount of oil so it
is called as minimum oil circuit breaker.

Minimum Oil Circuit

Breaker
Advantages
 It requires less maintenance.
 It is suitable for both automatic operation and manual.
 It requires smaller space
 The cost for breaking capacity in MVA is also less.
Disadvantages
 Oil deteriorates because of carbonization.
 There is a possibility of explosion and fire
 As it has a smaller quantity of oil, so carbonization increases.
 It is very difficult to remove gases from the space between the
contacts.
In this article the different types of circuit breakers, i.e. Air Circuit
Breaker, SF6 Circuit Breaker, Vacuum Circuit Breaker and Oil Circuit
Breaker have been discussed in a short detailed just to understand
the basic concept about these circuit breakers. And their subdivision
is also discussed along with advantages and disadvantages. We
have discussed every concept very clearly. If you have not
understood any of the topics, you feel any information is missing or
to implement any 聽 electrical projects for engineering 聽 students,
please feel free to comment in the below section.