Removal of total organic carbon and color from slaughterhouse wastewaters using electrocoagulation process: Central composite design optimization

In the present work, the process of electrocoagulation was utilized to remove total organic carbon (TOC) and color from slaughterhouse wastewaters and response surface methodology (RSM) inte-grated central composite design (CCD) was applied to optimize the operating factors of the pro-cess, that used iron electrodes. The optimal values for the removal of TOC and color were achieved with the quadratic regression model obtained from CCD. The optimum points for current density, inter-electrode distance, and reaction time obtained by the numerical analysis were 22.97 mA/m2, 12.03 mm, and 78.95 min for TOC, while these values were 23.08 mA/m2, 15.84 mm, and 80.77 min for color, respectively. At the optimum values, maximum TOC and color removal were obtained as 94.77% and 99.32%, respectively. The results indicated that the electrocoagulation process is an effective treatment technique for the removal of TOC and color from slaughterhouse wastewaters.