Although the material of construction of the reactor used for the partial oxidation of light paraffins has a major effect on both the composition of the product obtained and on the kinetics of oxidation, the present investigation is the first one to investigate several reactors systematically over a wide range of operating conditions. Glass, aluminum, steel, and copper reactors were employed in the present investigation for partial oxidation of both methane and propane. Postulates proposed earlier to explain the role of the surface do not explain all results. The reactor surfaces were found in many cases to catalyze surface reactions.Numerous previous investigators have presented experimental information that indicates partial oxidation results often vary significantly in reactors with different materials of construction or with different pretreatments of the inner surfaces. Several postulates have been proposed Reid, 1954, 1961;Semenov, 1958;Knox, 1968; Baldwin et al., 1970;Euker and Leinroth, 1970) that explain relatively well certain results obtained over rather limited experimental conditions, but no postulate proposed to date explains results obtained over wide ranges of conditions. A proposed mechanism should explain both the kinetics'and composition of products obtained.In a steel reactor operated at atmospheric pressure, a relatively constant rate of oxidation of propane occurred over the entire range of oxygen conversion from essentially 0 to 100%