ABSTRACT
Recently, Lii et al. [24] studied the degradation kinetics of agarose and carrageenans by ultrasound, observing that for solutions with 0.5 wt.% polysaccharide, the degradation rate decreases linearly with the reduced viscosity. This result indicated that the ultrasonic degradation of agarose and carrageenans follows a first-order kinetics, and is dependent on molecular size (decrease in viscosity). The degradation mechanism has been attributed to cavitation (mechanical effect); that is, the formation and collapse of microscopic vapor bubbles generated by the strong sound waves [25].
