I see. The module:Convert is very good in: accepting number formats, recognise units, combined units, prefixes (both symbol and name), calculate that smart sortnumber. It is not good in: return isolated results (eg, that sortnumber only), add table formatting. (btw, the input number usually returned as-is, unchanged). In my description convert-calls are hidden from the article editor. It is only used to get the plain time-quantity-in-seconds number (from any time-unit-input), the core & good {convert} trick. That seconds-number is fed into a sortkey-creator (like {nts}). The value+unit shown can be exactly the editor's input. Could work, is not very elegant. What Jimp writes, below, is about the sortvalue calculated by convert, my setup does not use that. -