Disaccharides containing two glucose units, including trehalose, cellobiose, maltose, gentiobiose, and isomaltose, were hydrolyzed in a single-component system using subcritical water at 200-240 degrees C and 10MPa. A mixture of maltose and trehalose was also hydrolyzed in a binary-component system using subcritical water at 210 and 230 degrees C. The fraction of the remaining disaccharides decreased as a function of the residence time and could be expressed by the Weilbull equation at any temperature. While trehalose showed the highest resistance to hydrolysis, the other disaccharides were much less resistant to hydrolysis and their reaction rates were not much different from each other. The mixture of trehalose and maltose exhibited a reduced resistance to the hydrolysis of trehalose at high hydrolysis temperatures. In addition, glucose, which was the product of the hydrolysis, can be easily subjected to further degradation to organic acids and consequently reduces the pH of the effluent. (c) 2015 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.