Pressure maintenance system for substantially sealed space

Abstract

A system for maintaining a desired pressure (either positive or negative with respect to surrounding) in a sealed room or other substantially sealed closed space has a gas supply and a gas exhaust connected to the space through a supply flow control element and an exhaust flow control element, respectively. A tracking one of the two control elements has its flow controlled in response both to the measured pressure in the space and to an indication of flow through the other, driving flow control element. The flow control elements are adapted to provide a designed, at least nominal effective leakage for the space with changes in the pressure differential between the space and at least one of the gas supply and gas exhaust. For preferred embodiments, the effective leakage is achieved by either mechanically or electronically modifying the flow/pressure characteristic of at least one of the valves to have a designed, at least nominal change in flow for changes in pressure across the element.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.