An Overview of Wastewater Treatment Processes Optimization Using Response Surface Methodology (rsm)

Optimization plays a key role in environmental engineering parameters since the best system performance mainly is on optimum point or optimum range. The majority of wastewater treatment processes are multi-variable and optimization through the classical method is inflexible, unreliable and time-consuming. Thus, response surface methodology (RSM), as a very efficient design and widely used technique, can be adapted for parameters optimization of various wastewater treatment processes. RSM is a practical mathematical and statistical tool that can be employed for analyzing the effects of several independent factors on the treatment process in order to obtain the maximum benefit from the process. Recently, several water and wastewater treatment processes have been optimized for treatment different type of wastewaters via RSM including; textile dye wastewater, tannery wastewater, industrial paint wastewater, landfill leachate, olive oil wastewater, and palm oil mill effluent. The present study focuses on the usability and effectiveness of RSM for process parameters modeling and optimization in wastewater treatment studies. In this paper, some of the RSM studies published recently were reviewed in order to verify the usability of RSM and its limitations.