This paper reports the development of hydrophobic porous alumina ceramic hollow fiber membranes for water desalination based on the membrane distillation process. The alumina hollow fiber with an average pore size of 0.7 mu m was prepared by the phase inversion and sintering method. The surface of the hollow fiber was converted from hydrophilic to hydrophobic via grafting with fluoroalkylsilane (FAS). The water desalination performance of the as-prepared hydrophobic hollow fiber was tested using the vacuum membrane distillation method. By exposing the shell side of the fiber to an aqueous solution of 4 wt% NaCl at 80 degrees C and vacuuming the lumen side of the fiber to a pressure of 0.04 bar, a water flux of 42.9 L m(-2) h(-1) was attained with a salt rejection over 99.5%, which is comparable with the best performance of polymer membrane. The water flux and salt rejection was found to decrease slowly with time, but after water washing-drying the rejection was recovered completely, and the water flux largely. The hydrophobic ceramic hollow fiber membrane developed in this work is promising for practical applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.