Novel composite ceramic membrane filters suitable for hot gas cleaning operations have been prepared from fly ash and titania particles on stainless steel woven mesh substrates. Both membranes had a structure like a solid packed bed with a thickness of less than 100 mu m In the domain of laminar flow, significant differences in the pressure drop between experimental results and those predicted from the Kozeny-Carman relationship were found, particularly for flow through the titania membrane. Membrane filters with extremely small pores such as the titania membrane are greatly affected by slip up to 80% in permeability at elevated temperatures. Efficiencies of filtration of typical coal fired power station exhaust fly ashes were found to be greater than 99% for both titania and ash membranes, whilst there was greater variation in the pressure drops in the ash membrane than in the titania at typical gas flows.