TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - MECHANICAL ENGINEERING - Preferred Components: The reaction chamber comprises steam-reforming catalyst. The catalyst fills the reaction chamber. The reaction chamber is part of reforming channel (128). A methanation catalyst is disposed in the reforming channel. The reaction channel is micro channel. An alcohol and water flow into the reaction chamber and hydrogen gas is produced with thermal efficiency of at least 10 %. The combustion and steam reforming chambers has volume of at most 1ml. The alcohol and water react on reforming catalyst and the resulting product reacts on methanation catalyst without intervening step to purify the resulting products. The product stream comprises hydrogen gas in hydrogen gas:carbon monoxide ratio of at most 10000:1. The device can also comprises reforming chamber containing reforming catalyst. The steam reforming catalyst comprises palladium and zinc. The combustor/reformer has thermal efficiency so that when water in 1.2:1 molar ratio are feed into the reforming chamber at 1 seconds, and fuel and oxygen are combusted in combustion chamber at rate to obtain 320 degrees C in the reforming chamber. The product gas contains carbon monoxide (at most 0.5 %). The reforming channel comprises inlet, reforming chamber, reforming catalyst, methanation catalyst, and an outlet. The fuel in the chamber is combusted to produce heat. At least 80 % of alcohol is converted to products. No preferential oxidation is used to remove carbon monoxide from the product stream.Preferred Properties: The length of the reaction chamber is at least 2 times greater than the length of combustion chamber. The method possesses stability so that after at least 100 hours of operation there is at most 5 % degradation in the conversion of alcohol and at most 5 % degradation of hydrogen gas:carbon monoxide ratio. The reforming chamber has steady-state thermal efficiency of at least 10, preferably 10-25 %.Preferred Methods: The reforming of alcohol comprises passing reactant mixture containing alcohol and water into reforming channel, passing fuel and oxidant into combustion chamber, maintaining temperature of reforming catalyst at 200-400 degrees C, maintaining temperature of methanation catalyst at 220-270 degrees C, contacting methanation catalyst with alcohol to obtain product stream with hydrogen gas.