The effects of the non-gray thermal radiation on the heating of a methane/argon laminar flow at high temperature are investigated. The preheating zone of a tubular reactor is studied, where the thermal decomposition of methane does not occur. The laminar flow is simulated with the commercial Fluent code in an axisymmetric geometry. The discrete ordinates method is applied to the numerical simulation of radiative heat transfer. The non-gray gas radiative model used is the absorption distribution function (ADF) using high temperature methane radiative properties which were recently published. Several thermal entrance regions of tubular reactors are compared and the influence of methane participation in radiative heat transfer is studied. The results show that the temperature field is significantly influenced by radiation due to methane absorption. Furthermore, the average flow temperature increases when the wall temperature, the tube diameter or the methane mole fraction increases. Due to intense absorption bands of methane, it is shown that the influence of methane non-gray thermal radiation should be included in simulations of such reactors. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.