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Abstract

AAPG Bulletin, V. 84, No. 1 (January 2000), P. 65-74.

Buoyancy and Interfacial Force Effects on Two-Phase Previous HitDisplacementNext Hit Patterns: An Experimental Study1

Tomochika Tokunaga, Katsuro Mogi, Osamu Matsubara, Hiroyuki Tosaka, and Keiji Kojima2

©Copyright 2000. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
1Manuscript received December 19, 1997; revised manuscript received October 19, 1998; final acceptance June 28, 1999.
2Department of Geosystem Engineering, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan; e-mail: [email protected]
We thank Y. Akita and M. Ueki of the Japan National Oil Corporation, S. Kamei of the Kyowa Interfacial Science Company, and M. Soeda, H. Mitani, and Y. Toida of the Japan Energy Corporation for their help during the measurements of physical properties of oil. We also thank K. Nakayama of the JAPEX Geoscience Institute, Inc.; S. H. Lee and J. L. Warner of Chevron Petroleum Technology Company, and the reading group of the rock physics laboratory at the Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin-Madison (H. F. Wang, D. J. Hart, T. L. Masterlark, D. Stanley, and M. J. Tompkins) for helpful discussions. H. F. Wang kindly read the earlier version of the manuscript and edited our English. Tokunaga is grateful for a grant from the Arai Science and Technology Foundation and for a Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan (no. A08751085; A09751031). The numerous suggestions of AAPG reviewers A. Brown, W. A. England, C. Shaw, and Neil Hurley greatly improved the manuscript.

ABSTRACT

Modeling secondary migration of oil currently is difficult because the physics governing the movement is complex and information on heterogeneity of carrier beds is always incomplete. To better understand the basic physical process of secondary migration, we discuss Previous HitdisplacementNext Hit patterns based on relative magnitudes among buoyancy, interfacial, and viscous forces using the results of one-dimensional vertical oil-water Previous HitdisplacementNext Hit experiments. Oil was injected at a constant rate from the lower inlet of a glass tube packed with sorted glass beads. The injection pressure and oil outflow rate were measured while we observed the Previous HitdisplacementNext Hit pattern. Runs were done using different grain sizes and injection rates.

Two Previous HitdisplacementNext Hit patterns were recognized during the experiments: type A consisted of stable, piston-like Previous HitdisplacementNext Hit and type B consisted of capillary fingering. The difference coincided with the relative magnitudes of the driving forces, which can be characterized by the dimensionless modified Bond (Bo') and Capillary (Ca) numbers. Type A pattern was produced for high Ca/Bo' ratios and type B pattern for low Ca/Bo' ratios. A flow regime diagram showing the regions of the two Previous HitdisplacementTop patterns was constructed in Ca/Bo' space, including the effects of gravity. Our results also showed that excess pressure for the nonwetting phase fluid to intrude into a porous medium was rate dependent.

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