Oil impregnated insulation paper plays an important role in a transformer as it insulates the windings from high voltage and current. Other than the type of paper used, the properties of oil such as viscosity, relative permittivity and dielectric loss play a major factor that contributes to the quality of the insulation paper. This paper discussed the sonication and esterification process on palm oil and treated waste vegetable oil and its' effects on the performance of oil impregnated paper. Basically through these processes, viscosity of oils will reduce. However, the resultant permittivity and dielectric loss as well as its' breakdown strength are rarely reported. Experiments were set to process (sonicates and esterify) the natural oils prior to the paper impregnation process. Results show that esterification is more effective than sonication process in reducing insulation oil viscosity, relative permittivity and dissipation factors as well as increasing the breakdown voltage of the oil impregnated paper. Palm oil methyl ester (POME) could serve as an excellent insulation oil which is very suitable as transformer oil as well as the impregnation medium for paper insulation.
