Experimental studies on pathway patterns of secondary oil migration

The oil migration patterns in porous medium are discussed based on the results of diphasic expulsing experiments. In the experiments, dyed kerosene was used as expulsing phase to expulse water saturated in a glass cylinder filled with sorted glass beads. Two series of experiments were done: one with different initial oil column heights and the other with variable oil injection rates. Three secondary migration patterns, including stable displacement pattern, fingering pattern and stringing pattern may be recognized in each series of experiments. Two classic dimensionless parameters, the modified Bond number and the Capillary number, were used to construct a phase diagram that may characterize the patterns. A new method was proposed to calculate the Darcian velocity of moving kerosene in the cylinder when only buoyancy force acts. It is found that when Darcian velocity is used to get the two dimensionless parameters, the data from both series of experiments, as well as those obtained from literatures, may be reasonably drawn in a phase diagram to identify the three migration patterns.