Water scarcity is one of the pressing challenges that we are facing as the demand for freshwater increases more than twice the rate of human population growth. As environmental stress of climate change and pollution of freshwater sources are exacerbated by rapid urbanization, there is also a growing interest in developing low-cost technologies to increase the water filtration and desalination capacity in water-scarce regions. For example, the inorganic filtration type of membranes is reported to be advantageous over the polymer-based filtration system in terms of high-temperature stability, low maintenance requirement, and fouling resistance. Thus, this study investigates the potential of cement-structured zeolite produced from corn stover ash to serve as the membrane for the electrodialysis (ED) desalination system. Response surface method was applied using the central composite design to determine the optimal value of sodium ion removal as a function of cement binder-zeolite ratio of 85:15, applied ED voltage of 15 V, and the number of stacked cell pairs of 3. The optimization of the ED desalination system indicates that utilizing synthetic zeolite A from corn stover ash into a zeolite composite membrane is effective at removing sodium ions from the prepared salt solution, yielding an 80.7 percent removal efficiency.
