The setup is a portable, laboratory-scale methanation reactor, designed to test the activity and stability of methanation catalysts. The internal lines of the setup (including up- and downstream of the reactor) consist of sulfinert/plastic lines.

A feed section (upstream) consists of a series of mass flow controllers designed to flow CO₂, CO, CH₄, H₂, O₂, H₂S, Ar, He, N₂, or any (non-hazardous) combination of the proposed gases (e.g. BFG, post-combustion flue gas, biogas CO₂/H₂/CH_4, diluted O₂ in Ar, diluted H₂S in Ar, …). Due to the portable nature of the setup, the pressure controllers are inside the setup (instead of in the gas cabinets) and can withstand gas pressures of 200 barg. A 4-way valve allows switching from reactive to inert Ar gas, controlled using a rotameter. A vacuum pump is installed if feed gas needs to be sampled on site. The reactor section comprises a fixed-bed reactor with oven with PID-based temperature control and a back-pressure regulator. Two types of reactors can be used: (i) a quartz tube (inner diameter: 7.3-7.5 mm) with overpressure release at 1 barg or (ii) a stainless-steel reactor with 12 barg overpressure release. Reactor and oven are designed to go up to temperatures of 600°C. A cooler removes condensable components from the product stream. The analysis section has multiple valve connections to take offline gas samples in Tedlar bags for GC analysis (both for feed and product streams) and online MS and GC analysis (of product stream).