The local thermal non-equilibrium model is adopted to solve the steady state heat and mass transfer problems of porous media solar receiver. The fluid entrance surface is subjected to concentrated solar radiation, and CH4/H2O mixture is adopted as feeding gas. The radiative heat transfer equation between porous strut is solved by Rosseland approximation. The impacts of variation in transport and thermophysical characteristics model of gas mixture on thermal performance of porous media receiver are investigated. The transport and thermophysical characteristics models which are not included in software Fluent are programmed by user defined functions (UDFs). The numerical results indicate that models of momentum source term for porous media receiver have significant impact on pressure drop and static pressure distribution, and the radiative heat transfer cannot be omitted during the thermal performance analysis of porous media receiver. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.