Guar gum an oil or natural gas reservoir at a high pressure and flow rate. This cracks the reservoir rock and then props the cracks open. Water alone is too thin to be effective at carrying proppant sand, so guar gum is one of the ingredients added to thicken the slurry mixture and improve its ability to carry proppant. There are several properties which are important 1. Thixotropic: the fluid should be thixotropic, meaning it should gel within few hours. 2. Gelling and degelling: The desired viscosity changes over the course of a few hours. When the fracking slurry is mixed, it
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)