It is very important to improve the combustion efficiency and reduce pollutant emission in order to save energy and environment. Especially, thermal NOx has been reduced through monitoring burner flame, because the thermal NOx is strongly related to flame characteristics. In this work, a flame-monitoring system was fabricated with photodiode, optical fiber, interference filter and data acquisition system, and it was applied to a lab-scale methane combustion system and a testing facility. Flame intensity and mean frequency increased with increasing turbulent intensity and fuel loading. The sensor signal from flame fluctuations differed from that without flame, which showed the availability af the flame scanner to find the presence of flame. NOx emissions increased with flame intensity.