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
Hydraulic fracturing formation. There are two methods of transporting proppant in the fluidhigh-rate and high-viscosity. High-viscosity fracturing tends to cause large dominant fractures, while high-rate (slickwater) fracturing causes small spread-out micro-fractures. Water-soluble gelling agents (such as guar gum) increase viscosity and efficiently deliver proppant into the formation. Fluid is typically a slurry of water, proppant, and chemical additives. Additionally, gels, foams, and compressed gases, including nitrogen, carbon dioxide and air can be injected. Typically, 90% of the fluid is water and 9.5% is sand with chemical additives accounting to about 0.5%. However, fracturing fluids have been developed using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)