The influence of heating method on oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (ODE) over BaO-CeO2-ZrO2 and BaCl2-TiO2-SnO2 catalysts was studied. Noticeable differences were observed at the ODE under conventional heating and microwave (MW) heating when only the granules of catalyst but not the surrounding gas mixture are heated. The MW heating of the BaO-CeO2-ZrO2 catalyst resulted in a decrease in selectivity to carbon dioxide and in an increase in selectivity to carbon monoxide. Supposedly, the conventional heating led to gas-phase complete oxidation of carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. The MW heating of the BaCl2-TiO2-SnO2 catalyst suppressed almost completely parallel and consecutive deep oxidation of ethylene but selectivity to ethylene increased remarkably. The study demonstrates potentialities of the MW heating in enhancing the efficiency of ODE. The observed phenomena can be accounted for the effective "quenching" of the target ODE product via inhibiting undesirable homogeneous reactions in the gas phase.