Ultrasound-based treatment approaches for intrinsic viscosity reduction of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP).

The present work deals with achieving viscosity reduction in polymer solutions using ultrasound-based treatment approaches. Use of simple additives such as salts, or surfactants and introduction of air at varying flow rates as process intensifying parameters have been investigated for enhancing the degradation of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) using ultrasonic irradiation. Sonication is carried out using an ultrasonic horn at 36 kHz frequency at an optimized concentration (1%) of the polymer.