Common lightning arrester classification.

There are many types of lightning arresters, including metal oxide arresters, line metal oxide arresters, gapless line metal oxide arresters, fully insulated composite jacket metal oxide arresters, and removable arresters.

The main types of arresters are tubular arresters, valve arresters and zinc oxide arresters. The main working principle of each type of lightning arrester is different, but their working essence is the same, all to protect the communication cable and communication equipment from damage.

Tube arrester
The tubular arrester is actually a protective gap with high arc extinguishing ability. It consists of two series gaps. One gap is in the atmosphere, called the outer gap. Its task is to isolate the working voltage and prevent the gas production pipe from flowing through the pipe. The second is burned out by the power frequency leakage current; the other is installed in the air pipe and is called the internal gap or arc extinguishing gap. The arc extinguishing capacity of the tubular arrester is related to the size of the power frequency continuous current. This is a protective gap lightning arrester, which is mostly used for lightning protection on power supply lines.

Valve type arrester
The valve-type arrester is composed of a spark gap and a valve plate resistor. The material of the valve plate resistor is special silicon carbide. The valve chip resistor made of silicon carbide can effectively prevent lightning and high voltage, and protect the equipment. When there is a high lightning voltage, the spark gap is broken down, the resistance value of the valve plate resistance drops, and the lightning current is introduced into the earth, which protects the cable or electrical equipment from the harm of the lightning current. Under normal circumstances, the spark gap will not be broken down, and the resistance value of the valve plate resistance is high, which will not affect the normal communication of the communication line.

Zinc oxide arrester
Zinc oxide lightning arrester is a lightning protection device with superior protection performance, light weight, pollution resistance and stable performance. It mainly uses the good non-linear volt-ampere characteristics of zinc oxide to make the current flowing through the arrester very small (microamp or milliampere level) at normal working voltage; when the overvoltage acts, the resistance drops sharply, venting the overvoltage Energy to achieve the effect of protection. The difference between this kind of arrester and the traditional arrester is that it has no discharge gap and uses the non-linear characteristics of zinc oxide to discharge and break.

Several lightning arresters are introduced above. Each type of arrester has its own advantages and characteristics. It needs to be used in different environments to achieve a good lightning protection effect.