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
Sol–gel process requires an excess of water and/or the use of a hydrolysis catalyst such as acetic acid or hydrochloric acid. Intermediate species including [(OR)−Si−(OH)] or [(OR)−Si−(OH)] may result as products of partial hydrolysis reactions. Early intermediates result from two partially hydrolyzed monomers linked with a siloxane [Si−O−Si] bond: or Thus, polymerization is associated with the formation of a 1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional network of siloxane [Si−O−Si] bonds accompanied by the production of H−O−H and R−O−H species. By definition, condensation liberates a small molecule, such as water or alcohol. This type of reaction can continue to build larger and larger silicon-containing molecules