Guar gum Ganganagar and Hanumangarh in Rajasthan are the major Guar trading markets. The United States has produced 4,600 to 14,000 tonnes of guar over the last 5 years. Texas acreage since 1999 has fluctuated from about 7,000 to 50,000 acres. The world production for guar gum and its derivatives is about 1.0 Million tonnes. Non-food guar gum accounts for about 40% of the total demand. Mainly it is used as a proppant transport / proppant suspending agent in hydraulic fracturing. At its peak the price was $8000 per ton. Chemically, guar gum is an exo-polysaccharide composed of the sugars galactose and
Guar gum ability of the fracturing liquid to transport proppant. Guar hydrates fairly rapidly in cold water to give highly viscous pseudoplastic solutions of, generally, greater low-shear viscosity than other hydrocolloids. The colloidal solids present in guar make fluids more efficient by creating less filter cake. Proppant pack conductivity is maintained by utilizing a fluid that has excellent fluid loss control, such as the colloidal solids present in guar gum. Guar has up to eight times the thickening power of starch. Derivatization of guar gum leads to subtle changes in properties, such as, decreased hydrogen bonding, increased solubility in water-alcohol mixture, and