This paper investigated the production of hydrogen from methane under atmospheric pressure using a plasma-catalyst hybrid converter with emphasis on energy conservation. A spark discharge was used to ionize the hydrocarbon fuel and air mixture with a catalyst to enhance hydrogen production using two energy saving schemes, namely, heat recycling and heat insulation. The experimental results showed that higher methane feeding rate resulted in higher reformate gas temperature and a corresponding increase in methane conversion efficiency. The energy saving systems also enabled the oxygen/carbon ratio to be decreased to reduce oxidation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and thereby improving the concentrations of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. By heat recycling, a lower methane feeding rate showed an 8.7% improvement in methane conversion efficiency whilst improvement was not apparent with higher methane supply rates due to the already high conversion efficiency. Moreover, it was shown that hydrogen production increased significantly with the reaction from water-gas shifting under the same operation parameters but with high methane selectivity. The best combination resulting in a total thermal efficiency of 77.11% was 10 L/min methane feeding rate and 0.8 O-2/C ratio. With water-gas shifting (S/C ratio = 0.5), an 86.26% hydrogen yield, equating to 17.25 L/min hydrogen production rate could be achieved. The equilibrium production rate was calculated using the commercialized HSC Chemistry software ((C)ChemSW Software, Inc.). Good correlation was obtained between the calculations and the experimental results. (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.