In this study, characteristics of the nano-second pulsed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) are experimentally investigated to clarify the effect of hydrocarbon feed chain length and carrier gas type (Ar-CH4 mixtures) on hydrogen production through plasma cracking. C-1-C-16 straight-chain alkanes are employed to survey the effect of hydrocarbon feed chain length. It is concluded that nonthermal plasma (NTP) is effective in cracking of wide range of fuels from light gaseous to heavy hydrocarbons into hydrogen. The reactor performance increases significantly due to increase of carbon number of hydrocarbon feed. Energy efficiency and hydrogen production rate vary between 23.8 and 121.1 l/kW h and 17.04 and 34.05 ml/min in the produced gas respectively. The highest energy efficiency is achieved when n-hexadecane is used as a feed with 55.5 W discharge power. Due to electron energy consumed in dissociation of methane, hydrocarbon cracking is more efficient in argon than in argon-methane mixtures. The absence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide as by-products in the product gas is also highly desirable for proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.