The purpose of this work is to develop a numerical scheme to investigate the thermal performance of a porous burner. Two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, energy equations, and chemical species transport equations are solved and heat release is described by a multi-step kinetics mechanism. Non-local thermal equilibrium between gas and solid is accounted for introducing separate energy equations for two phases. Moreover, the finite volume method is used to solve the radiative transfer equation of the solid phase to calculate the local radiation source/sink term. Calculated results for temperature profiles and CO and NO emissions are compared to experimental data and good agreement is observed. Predicted 2D temperature fields are also presented and the effects of flow and heat transfer parameters including excess air ratio, solid conductivity, volumetric heat transfer coefficient, and solid phase radiation properties on flame characteristics are investigated. It is observed that temperature profiles, gas velocity, and convective heat transfer between solid and gas phases are affected by the perturbations associated with these parameters. Crown Copyright (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.