Oxidative dehydrogenation of propane has been studied over a Ga2O3/MoO3 based catalyst. Using a differentially operated packed bed reactor with premixed oxygen and propane feed, the kinetic parameters for the main reaction and the consecutive and parallel reactions were experimentally determined. It was concluded that the reaction order in oxygen is higher for side reactions than for the main reaction of propylene formation and that a major process improvement is possible by employing a packed bed membrane reactor with distributed oxygen feed. Detailed numerical model simulations have been performed to quantify the benefits of the packed bed membrane reactor for this system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.