The collection of chemical kinetics data in catalytic combustion over very active palladium catalysts under conditions relevant to practical applications (e.g. gas turbine combustors) is extremely difficult, mainly due to strong exothermicity and very fast rate of combustion reactions. Within this purpose in this paper two types of laboratory structured reactors, which closely resemble industrial monolith catalysts, are investigated: (a) the annular reactor, consisting of a catalyst coated ceramic tube, co-axially placed in a quartz tube; (b) the metallic plate-type reactor, consisting of an assembled packet of metallic slabs coated with a ceramic catalytic layer. The design of the annular reactor configurations for kinetic investigations is first addressed by mathematical modeling. The resulting advantages, including: (i) negligible pressure drops; (ii) minimal impact of diffusional limitations in high temperature-high GHSV experiments; (iii) effective dissipation of reaction heat are then experimentally demonstrated for the case of CH4 combustion over a PdO/gamma -Al2O3 catalyst with high noble metal loading (10% (W/W) of Pd). The feasibility of a near-isothermal operation with the metallic plate-type reactor by an extremely effective dissipation of reaction heat through proper selection of highly conductive support material and of the geometry of the metallic slabs is finally discussed and experimentally demonstrated for the case of combustion of CO at high concentrations over a PdO/gamma -Al2O3 (3% (w/w) of Pd) catalyst.