Soybean oil mixed with methyl soyate to form a fluidity enhanced natural ester insulating oil

As a potential alternative to mineral oils because of their outstanding environmental performance, natural ester insulating oils have poor oxidizing and flow properties. This defect has drawn widespread attention from scholars. In this paper, the development of a new binary hybrid natural ester insulating oil, comprising soybean oil and methyl soyate as the main components, was conducted. The optimal percentage of methyl soyate was determined to be 10% through performance tests of the hybrid insulating oil, with the kinematic viscosity of the hybrid insulating oil being 28.28 mm 2 /s, presenting to be 19.81% lower than that of the pure soybean oil. The volume resistivity is 15.79 × 10 9 Ω∙m, the dielectric loss factor is 1.971%, and the breakdown voltage is 69.6 kV. The electrical indexes all reach the standard required by DL/T 1811–2018 at the laboratory scale. The analysis on the intrinsic mechanism of enhancing soybean oil flow performance through methyl soyate was conducted from a microscopic perspective through the use of molecular dynamics simulation.