Application of response surface methodology for optimization of natural organic matter degradation by UV/H2O2 advanced oxidation process

Background: in this research, the removal of natural organic matter from aqueous solutions using advancedoxidation processes (uv/h2o2) was evaluated. therefore, the response surface methodology and box-behnkendesign matrix were employed to design the experiments and to determine the optimal conditions. the effects ofvarious parameters such as initial concentration of h2o2 (100–180 mg/l), ph (3–11), time (10–30 min) and initialtotal organic carbon (toc) concentration (4–10 mg/l) were studied.results: analysis of variance (anova), revealed a good agreement between experimental data and proposedquadratic polynomial model (r2 = 0.98). experimental results showed that with increasing h2o2 concentration, timeand decreasing in initial toc concentration, toc removal efficiency was increased. neutral and nearly acidic phvalues also improved the toc removal. accordingly, the toc removal efficiency of 78.02% in terms of theindependent variables including h2o2 concentration (100 mg/l), ph (6.12), time (22.42 min) and initial tocconcentration (4 mg/l) were optimized. further confirmation tests under optimal conditions showed a 76.50% oftoc removal and confirmed that the model is accordance with the experiments. in addition toc removal fornatural water based on response surface methodology optimum condition was 62.15%.conclusions: this study showed that response surface methodology based on box-behnken method is a usefultool for optimizing the operating parameters for toc removal using uv/h2o2 process.