Hot-filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) is a promising method for commercial production of diamond films.Filament performance in heat transfer and hydrogen decomposition in reactive environment was investigated. Power consumption by the filament in vacuum, helium and 2% CH4/H2 was experimentally determined in temperature range 1300℃-2200℃. Filament heat transfer mechanism in C-H reactive environment was calculated and analyzed. The result shows that due to surface carburization and slight carbon deposition, radiation in stead of hydrogen dissociation, becomes the largest contributor to power consumption. Filament-surface dissociation of H2 was observed at temperatures below 1873K, demonstrating the feasibility of diamond growth at low filament temperatures. The effective activation energies of hydrogen dissociation on several clean refractory filaments were derived from power consumption data in literatures. They are all lower than that of thermal dissociation of hydrogen, revealing the nature of catalytic dissociation of hydrogen on filament surface. Observation of substrate temperature suggested a weakerrole of atomic hydrogen recombination in heating substrates in C-H environment than in pure hydrogen.