Pros And Cons Of Guar Gum

As mentioned earlier, the extraordinary volatility in guar prices in recent years has induced the guar gum user industries to look for alternatives. Some oilfield services companies like Baker Hughes, Haliburton, Trican and Nabors companies are reported to have begun in-house research on substitutes for guar gum.
The major alternatives to guar gum that are known to have been developed are described below, along with their limitations: 6.1. Tara gum:
Tara gum is obtained by grinding the endosperm of the seeds of Caesalpinia spinosa, of the Leguminosae family. Tara plant is grown in Peru, northern, western and southern South America and its gum belongs to the same chemical family as guar gum. Tara plant has also been introduced in the drier

It also enhances the shelf stability of the gel.
• Tara gum provides freeze-thaw stability as it prevents formation of ice crystals in ice cream.
• Tara gum is stable at high temperature during heat treatment.

However, the major disadvantage of tara gum is that it does not make liquids as viscous as guar gum does, and industries need to buy and use larger quantities of tara gum to get the desired viscosity. Another limitation is that tara gum is produced in very limited quantities compared to guar gum and locust bean gum. This makes it commercially unviable in the market of hydrocolloids or gums (Mathur 2012).
6.2. Locust Bean Gum:
Locust bean gum (LBG) is also known as Carob bean gum. It is a natural derivative from the seeds of the carob tree cultivated in the Mediterranean regionof Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and some adjacent areas of the Middle East (Mathur 2012).
Locust bean gum is cost-effective and used mostly in the food industry. It is the preferred texturiser for various food applications because of its natural image, neutral taste and the very creamy texture. LBG positively affects the protein stability and does not interact with other constituents in food due to its neutral

First, its cost is higher than that of guar gum. Second, the thermal stability of cellulose based materials is not good and is not likely to be improved. Third, large-scale manufacture is needed to make these materials price competitive.

6.5. Starch:
Starch is another possible alternative to guar gum and offers advantages in terms of relatively lower cost per kilogram and availability of many potential sources. However, a big disadvantage of starch over guar gum is that a very large quantity is required to achieve significant viscosity. Further, it has proved to be a limited success so far in fracking (breaking