Cavitation is a phenomenon having enormous potential for intensification of physical and chemical processing applications such as chemical synthesis, industrial wastewater treatment, cell disruption for release of intracellular enzymes, crystallization, extraction and leaching. However, the dynamic behavior of cavitational activity, especially in sonochemical reactors based on the use of ultrasonic irradiations, creates problems in proposing reliable design and operating strategies. The present work presents an overview of different techniques to understand the cavitational activity distribution in the reactor, highlighting the basic aspects, its applicability and relative merits/demerits. A detailed analysis of the literature has also been made with an aim of explaining the dependency of the cavitational activity on the design of sonochemical reactors and also the operating parameters. Recommendations for optimum operating parameters and design of reactor based on the experimental as well as theoretical analysis have been reported. Some trends in the future reactor designs useful in large scale applications have also been discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.