BACKGROUND: Cellular foam materials are a new type of catalyst support that provides improved mass and heat transport characteristics and similar pressure drops to other well-established structured supports such as monoliths. RESULTS: A Pd-based catalyst has been prepared using a moderate surface area (25 m(2) g(-1)) beta-SiC foam support without further washcoating. The stability of this catalyst has been tested for methane combustion at lean conditions, showing a small decrease of activity during the first 10 h followed by stable performance. Characterization of fresh and aged catalyst shows no significant changes. The influence of the most important reaction conditions, such as reactor loading (0.25-1 g), temperature (300-550 degrees C) and inlet methane concentration (833 and 1724 ppm), was studied in a fixed-bed reactor. The results were fitted to three kinetic models: Mars-van Krevelen; Langmuir-Hinselwood; power-law kinetics. CONCLUSIONS: The Pd/beta-SiC foam catalyst, prepared without the previous addition of a washcoating has been demonstrated to be stable for the combustion of methane-air lean mixtures. A Mars-van Krevelen kinetic model provides the best fit to the results obtained. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry