Guar Gum Powder Usage in Water Treatment Plant

Guar Gum is extracted from guar beans and has several applications in many industries. The main properties include the thickening and stabilizing property, its high low-shear viscosity.

Guar beans grow in a great many countries around the world, including India, Pakistan, US, Australia, Africa. A majority of the production of Guar Gum happens in India; it is estimated that India accounts for 80% of the total production.

What is a Water-Treatment Plant?

The aim of water treatment is to improve the quality of water and bring it to a state that is acceptable to use. The usage requirement may be that for drinking water, industrial water supply, irrigation, simple water flow maintenance, or some other reason.

The way a water plant works is that it removes all the contaminants and unnecessary components. There are several processes for water-treatment like sedimentation, filtration, disinfection, fluoridation, sludge drying, etc.

What is Coagulation?

Coagulation is a very popular process for water-treatment plants. The process includes adding alum (liquid aluminum sulfate) to untreated water. The effect of mixing it with water is to cause tiny particles of dirt that coagulate. The dirt particles stick together to form larger and heavier particles which are then easy to remove. Plants are often useful in the process of water-treatment as well since they are natural coagulants. Guar Gum is one of the popular materials useful for water treatment when mixed with alum. The other popular plant based materials include Nephelium lappaceum, Jatropha curcas, Plantago Ovato, and many more.

Significance of Guar Gum Powder for Water Treatment Plant

The process of water treatment includes flocculations. There are several synthetic flocculants like polyacryl-amide which are known to have several undesired side effects. Hence, there is a shift towards the use of more natural flocculants.

Guar Gum Powder is a natural flocculant that is useful for the purpose of water treatment and one that does not have any bad side effects either. It has the ability to reduce water turbidity from 26.5 to 1.0 and is a lot better than the synthetic alternative.

There are several popular process used for water treatment around the world. Here are some of them:

• Pre-chlorination for algae control and preventing biological growth.
• Aeration along with the process of per-chlorination to help remove the dissolved iron.
• The process of coagulation to enable flocculation to help the slow filtration of sand.
• The process of sedimentation helps separate solids trapped in the floc.
• The removal of particles from water by use of a sand bed is also effective; known as the process of filtration.

Thus, Guar Gum has several important properties that make it very useful for use as a water treatment plant. The main properties include thickening capacity which, is more as compared to corn starch, ability to prevent crystal formation in ice and the ability to form a good gel on combination with water.

Guar Gum has several applications like that in the mining industry, textile industry, as well as drilling and petroleum industries. Besides which the use of Guar Gum is also increasing in food and pharmaceutical products. There has also been a rise in the demand of Guar Gum all around the world in recent times.

It is predicted that Guar Gum will continue to be useful for the purpose of water treatment, especially since its ability to absorb lead from wastewater. Several studies indicate that it can successfully absorb 56.7% of lead at a pH of 4.5, however it is now so efficient at a higher pH level. For example, at pH level of 6 the absorption will decrease by 5.4%.