Efficiency of electrocoagulation method to treat chicken processing industry wastewater—modeling and optimization

•In literature first time, electrocoagulation method was used to treat chicken wastewater.•Response surface methodology was applied to study the process.•Second-order polynomial regression models were developed.•Experimental values showed good agreement with predicted values.•Results imply that the proposed treatment was very robust one to conventional methods.

The main objectives of the present study is to investigate the efficiency of electrochemical method to treat chicken processing industry wastewater under different operating conditions such as amount of dilution (10–30%), initial pH (4–9), applied current (10–20 mA/cm2) and electrolyte dose (500–1250 mg/l). From the experimental data, Box–Behnken experimental design (BBD) was used to develop the second order polynomial models. Optimum operating conditions was found to be; amount of dilution at 30%, initial pH of 6, applied current of 14 mA/cm2 and electrolyte dose of 1075 mg/l and it shows the 93% of COD removal rate and 95% of COD removal with electrical energy consumption value of 3.48 KW h/l. These results indicate that electrochemical method can be used as a effective treatment technique to treat chicken processing industry wastewater.