The kinetics of the steam reforming of methanol (SRM) was studied in a packed-bed reactor over a Mn-promoted Cu/Al2O3 catalyst under defined conditions. A Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hogan-Watson (LHHW)-type mechanism that assumes the dissociative adsorption of methanol on two distinct active sites as the rate-controlling step was found to satisfactorily describe the SRM reaction with activation energies of 77.3 and 64.5 kJ mol(-1) at low and high temperature, respectively. No mass or heat transfer limitations were observed under the experimental conditions used in this study. A reactor model was also developed, validated, and employed to predict the conversion, temperature, and concentration profiles. The axial dispersion had no influence on the temperature distribution but the effect was more pronounced on the methanol conversion.