Heterogeneous Fenton catalysts are extremely important in the degradation of organic dyes in wastewater. In this study, a novel heterogeneous Fenton catalyst with sand grains as the carrier was investigated its performance in degrading organic dyes. The catalyst endows with excellent dye degradation efficiency in H2O2 solution, and the degradation rate of Methylene blue (MB), Crystal Violet (CV), and Congo Red (CR) is 84.0 %, 87.2 %, and 76.0 % within 80 min at the catalyst concentration of 0.1 g/L, respectively. The influences of degradation conditions on the degradation rate of MB wastewater were studied. The results shows that dye concentration, pH value, degradation temperature, H2O2 concentration, and catalyst concentration all affect the degradation rate. The dye degradation model was built based on the central composite design (CCD) − response surface method (RSM). It shows that pH value, degradation temperature, H2O2 concentration, and catalyst concentration are significant influencing factors of degradation rate; the order of importance for these factors is: catalyst concentration > H2O2 concentration > pH value > degradation temperature; the optimal degradation conditions are the pH value of 4.00, the degradation temperature of 36 °C, the H2O2 concentration of 0.96 mol/L, the catalyst concentration of 0.21 g/L, and the degradation rate of MB reaches 96.27 %, which is much higher than the optimal value of 92.50 % obtained by single factor method at the same dye concentration.