The partial oxidation of methane under periodic operation over Ni/gamma-Al2O3 catalyst was investigated in a Pd-membrane reactor. The effects of key parameters such as the inlet composition and the sweeping gas on methane conversion and the hydrogen recovery are numerically established with two periodic input functions. In order to analyze the effect of the inputs modulation, the reaction was performed under low steam to methane ratio at a moderate temperature and pressure. It was obtained that to achieve process intensification is to operate the process in a periodic way. The main results show that the periodic input functions can improve the performance of the process compared to the optimal steady state operation. Moreover, there is an optimum amplitude of manipulated inputs leads to a maximum of hydrogen recovery. It is noteworthy that the comparison between the predicted performance via the sinusoidal and the square ways show that the better average performance was obtained with the square way.