The Global Methane Pledge declared at the 2021 United Nations climate change conference (COP26) marked the world’s commitment to eradicate methane emissions. Most of these emissions are generated by the oil-gas industry, waste landfills, and agriculture sectors, and are lean in composition. This work explores the use of an intensified reactor that implements the chemical looping principle to handle lean methane emissions. A model-based framework is used to showcase the baseline performance of the proposed reactor in converting methane emissions using nickel-based oxygen carriers. Then, sensitivity analysis of the reactor performance with respect to operating conditions is performed. The reactor is subsequently optimized to minimize the methane emitted, using a dynamic program with safety and operability constraints for the alternating redox process. With the optimal cycle strategy, we demonstrate that near-complete methane conversion can be achieved by the reactor without external heating.