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Scuba Diving Regulators

Scuba diving regulators are the systems that deliver air from an air tank to your mouthpiece. If that sounds simplistic, it’s meant to. The job that they’re designed to do is both essential and simple in concept. However reality makes that job a much more complex affair than one would suspect.

For starters, scuba diving regulators have to deal with the pressure in the tank. This means that they have to be holding back 100psi or more of pressure, and then releasing a little bit of that air for use by you. As you can imagine inhaling something at 100 psi would seriously damage you. So the regulator must lower it to a breathable pressure.

As if that weren’t enough, scuba diving regulators also must contend with the inherent limitations of the human body. Our lungs are marvelous adaptations, but they have an intriguing limitation that never comes into play in our day to day life. They only function when the air they receive is at least as pressurized as the atmosphere around them. Since we are usually breathing the atmosphere, this never becomes a problem. However when you go scuba diving, the pressure increases the deeper you dive, so a diving regulator must be able to sense the atmospheric pressure, and only lower the pressure on your breathing air to that level.

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