In this work, a chitosan sample with a high degree of deacetylation (DD >95%) obtained from freshwater shrimp shells was subjected to drying processes in an electric oven and by supercritical CO2. The results indicated that drying chitosan particles with supercritical CO2 resulted in a very significant increase in specific surface area and pore volume, and also increased the material's crystallinity index. This drying route led to a more than 10-fold reduction in viscosimetric molecular weight (from 35.3 to 3.0 kDa), indicating that the physical drying process caused the chitosan to depolymerize, which usually occurs by enzymatic and chemical methods, according to the literature. Low molecular weight chitosan is essential for some applications in the field of biomedicine (drug delivery for example); hence, drying via the CO2 route can be considered a promising technique for the production of high value-added materials with applications in this area. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:1969-1976, 2015. (c) 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers