Abstract: The combustion of methane/air mixture in a two-section porous burner was numerically simulated for the optimal design of a porous media burner. The software FLUENT with self-designing codes was used to solve a two-dimensional transient mathematical model of the combustion. The effects of the parameters, such as equivalence ratio, radiative extinction coefficient and thermal conductivity of the porous media on the range of stable burning rate were investigated. The results showed that the difference of maximum and minimum limits of burning rate enlarges from 0.12 to 0.72 when the equivalence ratio increases from 0.55 to 0.9 and the maximum and minimum limits of burning rate both increase obviously. Compared with the reference example, if the downstream thermal conductivity is 5 times greater than its original value and the upstream thermal conductivity remains unchanged, the difference of maximum and minimum limits of burning rate reaches 0.47. It was found that the radiative extinction coefficient of upstream section increases but that of downstream one remains unchanged, a relatively biggest stable operation can be provided.