ON THE MEASUREMENT OF THE CONDUCTIVITY OF HIGHLY INSULATING LIQUIDS

The present increasing interest for accurate conductivity measurements on highly insulating liquids is underlined. Criteria for valuable mea surements are recalled. An apparatus using a new technology is briefly described. It allows us to perform a number of experiments and it is shown that accurate measurements of the conductivity of highly insulat ing oils can now be obtained at room temperature. Experiments carried out in an extended range of electrode gap distance from 0.7 to 7 mm, a nd of voltage from 0.1 to 100 V, demonstrate that we do measure the vo lume conductivity of the liquid. From a practical point of view, it is concluded that laboratory or in-line measurements on highly insulatin g oils can also be made using small volume of liquid or small electrod e gap distance.