Guar Gum Powder Application in Different Industries
Guar gum is extracted from guar beans and has several vital properties that make it very important for several industries. This includes properties like thickening, stabilizing and many more. It is thus useful in several industries like food, textile, etc. It is essentially an extract from the Guar plant that is found in many regions of India and Pakistan. In fact, 80% of world production occurs in India & Pakistan.
Common Applications
Some of the common applications:
- Natural thickener
- Emulsifier
- Stabiliser
- Bonding agent
- Hydrocolloid
- Gelling agent
- Soil Stabiliser
- Natural fibre
- Flocculants
- Fracturing agent
List of industrial applications
- Food: There are many applications of guar gum powder in the food industry as listed here:
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- It helps provide a smooth and creamy texture to ice cream and dairy products and helps prevent formation of ice crystals and quick melting.
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- It increases shelf life of several bakery products besides which it helps improve texture, overall structure, crumb, moisture retention and dough yield.
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- It helps with the better sheet formation of noodles and helps improve moisture retention and texture as well.
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- It is vital to the pet food industry as viscosifier.
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- It’s property to absorb free water and prevent excessive stickiness in pastry ices is also useful.
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- For processed cheese, it also improves texture and flavour and is useful as a stabilizer.
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- It improves the feel, shelf life and controls viscosity of beverages.
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- It is useful for soups as a thickener and stabiliser.
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- Several meat products also benefit from the use of Guar Gum. For example, it is useful as a binder for sausages since it absorbs free water and improves the flow rate. It also helps prevent separation and migration.
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- Many dressings and sauces have better flow properties when using it. It also helps as a thicker and emulsion stabilizer.
- Construction: It is useful in developing explosives like the gel sausage type and pumpable slurry ones that are useful in the construction industry. It is also useful as a waterproofing agent.
- Textiles: It is useful to the textile printing industry and carpet printing as well.
- Cosmetics: The useful properties of Guar Gum as a thickener, protective colloid in Skincare products, creams and lotions make it vital to the cosmetic industry. It is also useful in several other cosmetic products like toothpaste, shampoos, and shaving cream.
- Pharmaceuticals: It has many applications like gelling, viscosifying, thickening, suspension, stabilisation, emulsification, preservation, water retention, water phase control, phase control, binding, clouding, process aid, etc. All such applications are vital to the Pharmaceutical industry. It also has several other application like a binder and disintegrating agent. This is useful for the purpose of tablet manufacturing.
Some of the other applications include:
- Anti-acid formulations
- Tablet binding and disintegration agent
- Controlled drug delivery systems
- Slimming aids
- Nutritional foods
- Paper: The paper industry has several requirements to make the surface denser and also optimize it for writing. Guar gum posses the best set of properties for this purpose and also improves the erasive property, improves bonding strength, folding strength, adhesion and hardness.
- Oil Field: Guar gum helps increase the production rate of oil and gas. It is also useful as a surfactant, defoamer, and synthetic polymer.
- Oil well drilling and Fracturing: Since Guar Gum has high viscosity it is useful as drilling aid in oil well drilling, geological drilling and water drilling. It helps maintain mud viscosity and remove drill waste from deep holes.
- Mining: It is useful as flocculants to produce liquid-solid separation and useful for flotation as well. It is useful as a depressant for talc and insoluble gangue minded along with several other valuable minerals.
