A technical term used to quantify this problem is turndown. “Turndown” refers to the ratio of high-range measurement to low-range measurement possible for an instrument while maintaining reasonable accuracy. For pressure-based flowmeters, which must deal with the non-linearities of Bernoulli’s Equation, the practical turndown is often no more than 3 to 1 (3:1). This means a flowmeter ranged for 0 to 300 GPM might only read with reasonable accurately down to a flow of 100 GPM. Below that, the accuracy becomes so poor that the measurement is almost useless. Advances in DP transmitter technology have pushed this ratio further, perhaps as far as 10:1 for certain installations. However, the fundamental problem is not transmitter resolution, but rather the nonlinearity of the flow element itself. This means any source of pressure-measurement error – whether originating in the transmitter’s pressure sensor or not – compromises our ability to accurately measure flow at low rates. Even with a perfectly calibrated transmitter, errors resulting from wear of the flow element (e.g. a dulled edge on an orifice plate) or from uneven liquid columns in the impulse tubes connecting the transmitter to the element, will cause large flow-measurement errors at the low end of the instrument’s range where the flow element produces only small differential pressures. Everyone involved with the technical details of flow measurement needs to understand this fact: the fundamental problem of limited turndown is grounded in the physics of turbulent flow
and potential/kinetic energy exchange for these flow elements. Technological improvements will help, but they cannot overcome the limitations imposed by physics. If better turndown is required for a particular flow-measurement application, an entirely different flowmeter technology should be considered.