The paper deals with the advantages of porous alumina membranes as templates for technological structures used in hydrogen economy and describes the features of membrane technology as well as characterization methods of their geometrical parameters. In order to determine surface porosity, two methods (such as theoretical calculations and digital image processing) have been used. It has been shown that the results are in good agreement with each other. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.