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Three structural designs for ceramic membranes have been achieved for the first time through the co-extrusion of polymeric and ceramic layers. During co-extrusion, micro-channels are initiated due to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability and they propagate through the different layers.The polymeric layer(s) is then calcined off during the heat treatment step, which opens the microchannels and following sintering a ceramic membrane with open micro-channels ranging from a few to a few tens of micrometres in diameter can be formed. These long, straight and nontortuous micro-channels can be controlled to be open at any or all of the surfaces. Design 1 has open micro-channels passing through the entire membrane wall, Design 2 has a separation layer at the lumen and open micro-channels at the shell side, and Design 3 has open micro-channels from both lumen and shell sides sandwiching a separation layer of sponge-like structure. Aside from having much improved mass transfer property due to the reduced effective membrane thickness, they can be easily incorporated into hybrid systems with anticipated improvements in unit compactness and performance. The pure water permeation of Design 2 reached up to 159, 000 L/m 2 h bar with pore sizes in the micro-filtration range. The micro-channels are easily accessible from the shell/lumen side; therefore catalysts or adsorbents can be easily deposited into the micro-channels. Examples of possible applications include a high-efficiency dispersing device realised with Design 1; a gas chromatography column for gas separation with very low pressure drop realised with Design 2 and a highly compact membrane micro-reactor for consecutive reactions proposed with Design 3.

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The development of a metal-organic framework/α-alumina composite leads to a novel concept: efficient adsorption occurs within a plurality of radial micro-channels with no loss of the active adsorbents during the process. This composite can effectively remediate arsenic contaminated water producing potable water recovery, whereas the conventional fixed bed requires eight times the amount of active adsorbents to achieve a similar performance.