Methane number and Lower Heating Value (LHV) of natural gas are determined by the online measurement of thermal conductivity at two different temperatures. Natural gas is first considered as a ternary mixture of the most important components. A pseudo-ternary composition can then be calculated, using the thermal conductivity formula for mixtures derived from kinetic theory. A non-linear system is solved numerically using the Newton-Raphson method. A sensor based on thermal conductivity measurement has been developed and tested successfully for many natural gas compositions.