What does “turndown” of a distillation tower mean?
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The minimum flow rate through a tray (turndown) is higher than that of most trays before the tray begins to experience weeping. This refers to the disadvantages of sieve plate towers: in order to prevent leakage, these towers require a higher minimum flow rate compared to other types of trays. What does “Turndown” mean here? Someone previously posted about the compressor’s turndown, which refers to reducing the load; can it also be translated as reducing the load here? This post was last edited by ludinggi on 2009-2-17 16:44]
That’s right, it’s about reducing the load. Depending on the situation, we talk about reducing the load or operating at a lower capacity. This post was last edited by RainWolf on 2009-2-16 at 15:33.]
I saw another sentence: The ability of a column to operate at rates lower than its full design load is called turndown. The capacity of a distillation column to function at levels below its designed load is referred to as turndown. Can this be called operational flexibility here? It seems that “trundown” indeed has many meanings, and it depends on the context.
The turndown ratio is operational flexibility; literally, it refers to the load reduction ratio
Based on your two sentences, it refers to the “lowest adjustable load”; translating it as “reduce the load” is not quite appropriate. A long time ago, this forum discussed it, and I replied in the same way; but now full-text search is not available, so it can’t be found.
The ability of a column to operate at rates lower than its full design load is called turndown. It doesn’t seem to be the lowest load that can be used here; it’s just a load that is lower than the design load.
For the same concept, there are different expressions in both Chinese and English: flexibility, operation at reduced load, load adjustment range. Terms such as fle*bility, turndown ratio, load ratio, and load range are used. You have only provided their definitions, but Echo raised a very important question: how to choose the appropriate wording depending on the context. Therefore, I tend to agree with Echo’s choice of term: handshake
A passage from a device design document: The design capacity of the plant is 100,000 metric tons/year of XX product, based on 8,000 operating hours per year; the flexible operating capacity ranges from 120% to 60% of the design capacity.............................. The turndown for this unit is 60% of the design capacity. The unit’s annual operating time is 8,000 hours. In this case, the operational flexibility lies between 60% and 120%, with 60% representing the lowest achievable load level.
The minimum flow rate through a tray (turndown) is higher than that of most trays before the tray starts to experience weeping. To prevent leakage, the minimum flow rate required of a tray when the load is reduced must be higher than that of other types of trays. I think “turndown” can be translated here as load reduction, or as the lowest adjustable load, as echommm suggested
Isn’t that “low load” in the parentheses? It’s more concise.
Thank you all. It can be translated as “minimum adjustable load” or “lowest load”.