• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.12
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• pp.1836-1843
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• 2017

In this paper, we investigated fire cases those are believed to be caused by explosion of a electrolytic motor start capacitor. Using two types of commercially available electrolytic motor start capacitors, capacitor current and the possibility of capacitor explosion were tested. And the ignition possibility of the internal material leaked from a capacitor was also tested. In addition, experiments were conducted to see if the fire could spread when a capacitor was exposed to an external flame. From our test we observed that the current of the electrolytic motor start capacitor rose continuously to a certain level by product, if the capacitor was continuously energized with working voltage, and then the capacitor was exploded. The gas and liquid leaked from the capacitor by the explosion could ignite by an electric arc and an external flame. The capacitor current at explosion was different product by product, but each product had a certain current level at explosion. And the increase rate of the capacitor current until explosion was 24% and 31% for the products used in the experiment. We proposed the capacitor explosion prevention method that cuts off power when the capacitor current rises to a certain threshold level. The proposed method can be used if the current of the applied electrolytic motor start capacitor rises continuously and then the capacitor is exploded at a certain current level when the capacitor is energized continuously.