Interleaving forward converters with single-capacitor turn-off snubber for stunning poultry applications

This paper proposes an interleaving forward converters with single-capacitor turn-off snubber associated with a full-bridge inverter for poultry stunning applications. The proposed converters can use the single-capacitor snubber to smooth out switch turn-off transient for reducing turn-off loss. As compared with the counterparts of the conventional converter topologies, the proposed converters have the merits of less component counts, higher efficiency over a certain load range, smaller size, and they are easier to implement. In the paper, mechanism of the stunning poultry is first reviewed and then, the desired stunning voltage waveforms and the stunning parameters with auto-tuning algorithm are proposed. Performance measurements from a prototype have verified the stunning parameters with auto-tuning algorithm and feasibility of the overall system design.