In this study, the photolytic degradation of Basic Red 2 (BR2) via UV radiation in the presence of H2O2 was optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). Under the optimized conditions of 20 mu M BR2, 1.67mM H2O2, and pH 7.6, the ANOVA results indicated that the proposed model can be used to navigate the design space. It was found that the response of BR2 degradation is very sensitive to the independent factors of BR2 concentration and H2O2 concentration. In the optimization, R-2 and R-adj(2) correlation coefficients for the model were evaluated as 0.89 and 0.80, respectively. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.