Papermaking wastewater accounts for a large proportion of industrial wastewater, and it is essential to obtain accurate and reliable effluent indices in real-time. Considering the complexity, nonlinearity, and time variability of wastewater treatment processes, a dynamic kernel extreme learning machine (DKELM) method is proposed to predict the key quality indices of effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD). A time lag coefficient is introduced and a kernel function is embedded into the extreme learning machine (ELM) to extract dynamic information and obtain better prediction accuracy. A case study for modeling a wastewater treatment process is demonstrated to evaluate the performance of the proposed DKELM. The results illustrate that both training and prediction accuracy of the DKELM model is superior to other models. For the prediction of the quality indices of effluent COD, the determinate coefficient of the DKELM model is increased by 27.52 %, 21.36 %, 10.42 %, and 10.81 %, compared with partial least squares, ELM, dynamic ELM, and kernel ELM, respectively.