A control system for maintaining high stability in gas pressure

A pressure control system has been implemented on an experiment designed to detect the presence of fractional charges in bulk matter. The experiment utilizes a liquid-droplet generation technique requiring high-stability gas-pressure delivery to ensure accurate data collection. The pressure control system consists of a pressurized mercury reservoir containing a low-vapor-pressure, diffusion-pump oil. A commercially available differential pressure transducer, servo-driven valve, and controller sense the pressure fluctuations with respect to a static reference pressure. The system can maintain constant pressure to better than one part in 10,000 at working pressures in the range of 100 to 300 psi. 3 refs., 7 figs.