Effect of nitric acid on the hydrophobicity of HTV and LSR polymeric insulators

Polymeric insulators offer a lot of advantages over ceramic such as light-weight construction, ease of installation and maintenance, vandalism resistance, improved contamination performance due to use hydrophobic materials and compact line design. Overhead transmission lines insulators which located near chemical factories are suffering from industrial pollution that characterized by industrial waste gases produced from the chimneys of factories. Nitric oxide is naturally generated during thunder and lightning, where oxygen combines with nitrogen yielding nitric oxide gas (unstable), this gas combines with atmospheric oxygen simultaneously forming nitrogen dioxides which is dissolved in atmospheric water vapour also forming nitric and nitrous acids. Nitrous acid dissociates to nitric oxide…