Ceramic-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs): A review

Recently, porous ceramic and clayware membranes have been widely used in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as separators. Chemical, thermal and mechanical stability, low-cost and many other advantages of ceramic membranes make them an appropriate substitute for expensive polymeric ion exchange membranes. Moreover, good power performances in short and long-term periods were observed using ceramic membranes. In this review, we attempted to gather and assort all the experiments which applied ceramic or other earthenware membranes as the separator of MFCs. The effects of physical and chemical properties of ceramic membranes on the power efficiency of MFCs as well as scale-up challenges and future aspects were also studied.