Ceramic-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs): A review Vajihe Yousefi a , Davod Mohebbi-Kalhori a,b,* , Abdolreza Samimi a a Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran b University of Sistan and Baluchestan Central Laboratory, Zahedan, Iran article info Article history: Received 25 February 2016 Received in revised form 1 June 2016 Accepted 3 June 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Microbial fuel cell (MFC) Low-cost separator Ceramic membranes Earthenware Clayware Proton exchange membrane (PEM) abstract 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. © 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Providing sufficient clean water and introducing new neat and economic sources of energy instead of fossil fuel-based energy are the most important challenges at present. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology offers a solution to these problems by simultaneously removing the organic pollutants in the wastewater and providing clean electrical energy through a catalytic reaction of microorganisms [1,2]. However, despite the considerable developments in the past decades, the commercialization of MFCs technology is delayed as a result of several barriers such as low power performance [3,4], the high cost of materials including high-priced proton exchange membranes (PEM) and expensive metallic catalysts used in the electrodes [5]. Until today, several researches have been done to bring this technology even closer to real world appli- cations by engineering or technical approaches. Among them, finding appropriate and economic separators attracted great attentions [6,7]. In addition to high price, ion exchange membranes, i.e. cation exchange membranes (CEM) and anion exchange membranes (AEM), caused other problems including pH splitting [8], biofouling [9], high oxygen and substrate diffu- sion. Therefore, the cheaper and more effective alternatives such as porous cloths, J-cloth, glass fiber, composite/polymer membranes and etc were examined as separators in MFCs [7,10]. Recently, ceramic membranes were introduced as a viable option for scaling-up and the practical application of MFC technology due to their low production cost, availability, very good stability and high structural strength compared to other * Corresponding author. Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, PO Box 98164- 161, Zahedan, Iran. Tel.: þ98 54 31136459; fax: þ98 54 2447092. E-mail addresses: davoodmk@egn.usb.ac.ir, davod.mohebbi@gmail.com (D. Mohebbi-Kalhori). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (2016) 1 e19 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.06.054 0360-3199/© 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Yousefi V, et al., Ceramic-based microbial fuel cells (MFCs): A review, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.06.054