Studies on the kinetics of methanol steam reforming (MSR) reaction have been extensively carried out in these past decades. However, in order to get a more thorough understanding of the MSR performance, it is necessary to integrate the reaction kinetics of MSR with the reactor design/operating parameters. This paper presents such works and employs Damkohler number (Da) to conveniently describe the trade-off between kinetics (reaction time scale) and operating parameters (residence time scale) of the MSR system. The correlation of Da and methanol conversion was also experimentally verified. Furthermore, feasibility criterion as a parameter to describe energy gain obtained by MSR reaction over the energy required by absorption heat pump (AHP) system was viewed, and its correlation with Da was investigated. Some results showed that even at various combinations of GHSV and MSR reaction temperature, the Da - methanol conversion empirically have a similar typical curve. On the other hand, for the combined AHP-MSR system, changing the value of Da, either by changing the GHSV or MSR reaction temperature, results in different profiles of feasibility criterion and hydrogen production rate. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.