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
Drilling fluid manageable level. Caustic (sodium hydroxide), anhydrous lime, soda ash, bentonite, barite and polymers are the most common chemicals used in water based drilling fluids. Oil Base Mud and synthetic drilling fluids can contain high levels of benzene, and other chemicals Most common chemicals added to OBM Muds: Source: Water-based drilling mud most commonly consists of bentonite clay (gel) with additives such as barium sulfate (barite), calcium carbonate (chalk) or hematite. Various thickeners are used to influence the viscosity of the fluid, e.g. xanthan gum, guar gum, glycol, carboxymethylcellulose, polyanionic cellulose (PAC), or starch. In turn, deflocculants are used to reduce