Use The Right Air Circuit Breaker For Your Installations
Air Circuit Breaker
Circuit breakers are used to provide short-circuit protection for electric circuits. It is an switch designed to automatically operate to protect an electrical circuit from damage due to access current or short-circuit or overload.
Once the air circuit breaker operates it need not be replaced with a new one. You can reset it and use it again. It is not like a fuse which has to be replaced once used. There are circuit breakers that can provide complete protection upto 6300A and are available in different sizes.
There are circuit breakers for low-current circuits, individual household appliances and high voltage circuits.
The circuit breaker system have the same features though the details vary depending on the voltage class, current rating and the type.
Circuit breaker operation
The circuit breakers use protective relay pilot device to sense the fault in the circuit. These require a seperate power source such as a battery to operate. The high voltage circuit breakers use current transformers, protective relays or an internal power source to detect the fault.
The circuit breaker is used to detect any fault in the circuit. Once the fault is detected the circuit breaker must interrupt the circuit. A contact is used to trip the circuit. This can be done by the mechanical energy stored in the circuit breaker. Usually a spring or compressed air is used to break the contact.
Life of circuit breaker
The contact in the circuit breaker should be able to take the heat produced by the circuit and also able to take the heat produced while interrupting the circuit. For this the contacts are made up of heat conducting materials like copper, alloys of copper, alloys of silver and others. The contact gets eroded while interrupting the circuit. Once the contact erodes you have to replace it. Some of the circuit breakers have replaceable contacts.
Circuit breakers come in different sizes and different capabilities. They optimize the performance of the electrical installations. Acb breakers and other circuit breakers fit seamlessly within the existing energy distribution set-up.
Maintenance
When a circuit is interrupted an arc is generated. This arc has to be controlled to avoid eroding the contact. This is because the gap between the contacts should be available for use again.
Different mediums are used in which the arc forms. The different mediums are vacuum, air, insulating gas or oil. The air circuit breaker maintenance should be done by cleaning the contacts. You should use non-abrasive material to clean it.