The synergetic effect of catalyst and cold plasma on dry reforming of methane was investigated in a plasma fluidized bed with Ni/gamma-Al2O3 catalyst. As a comparison, the experiments in the plasma packed bed were also carried out. The cold plasma was generated by the dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) at atmospheric pressure. Both contact modes between plasma and catalytic particles promoted the catalyst activity at low temperatures (e.g., 673 K). In the plasma fluidized bed, the synergetic effect of the catalyst and the plasma was clearly identified from 648 K to 798 K. The synergetic effect characterized by the conversion ratio of synergetic results to the sum of the results of only using plasma and only using catalyst showed that the plasma fluidized bed behaved better than the plasma packed bed within a certain temperature range. For the versatile flow regimes in the fluidization of catalysts, the plasma fluidized bed found great potential in plasma enhanced chemical processes by manipulating the gas-solid two-phase flows in the plasma environment. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.