The combustion processes of lean mixtures of methane in air is examined by employing a detailed chemical kinetic scheme consisting of 178 elementary reaction steps with 41 species. The changes with time in the concentrations of the major relevant reactive species are determined from the preignition reactions to the time near equilibrium conditions. The results of such an approach to the combustion process are considered over a wide range of initial temperatures (1000 K - 1600 K) and equivalence ratios (0.2 - 1.2) while the pressure was kept at atmospheric. Calculated results obtained while using this model tend to be in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values of ignition delay. The ignition delay of methane-air mixture correlated by the following empirical expression gtd(dsdedcd) me A exp. (-BTdi/1000) in which constants A and B are function of the equivalence ratio while Tdi is the initial mixture temperature in mDK.