Toward resilient ceramic anion exchange membranes for sustainable microbial fuel cells: Challenges and strategies

Ceramic anion exchange membranes (AEMs) are being explored as cost-effective and resilient alternatives to polymeric membranes in microbial fuel cells (MFCs), offering superior chemical stability in harsh wastewater environments. The single-chamber air-cathode (SCAC) design provides a compact, low-maintenance platform for simultaneous bioelectricity generation and wastewater treatment, with ceramic AEMs enhancing robustness against alkaline and fouling stresses. However, their specific challenges in SCAC-MFCs remain underexplored. This review addresses that gap by systematically analyzing obstacles to uninterrupted reactant supply, complete redox reactions, and sustainable power output in MFCs treating high-strength agro-industrial wastewater. Moving beyond conventional summaries, this review adopts a mechanism-driven and application-oriented framework that explicitly links fundamental challenges—spanning ion-transport limitations, electrochemical instability, hydration management, CO2 contamination, biofouling–mineral scaling, and fabrication and manufacturing constraints—to their direct impacts on SCAC-MFC performance, as well as to targeted mitigation strategies and deployment-oriented future directions. By situating these insights within the broader context of wastewater-to-energy conversion, this review underscores the potential of ceramic AEMs as durable, scalable, and sustainable enablers of next-generation bioelectrochemical technologies.