In this research, a conventional shell and tube reactor is supported by the hydrogen and vapor membrane tubes for water vapor removal and hydrogen permeation in the single step DME synthesis process. The proposed dual membrane structure is heterogeneously modeled based on the mass and energy conservation laws at steady state condition. To prove the accuracy of the developed model and assumptions, the simulation results of the conventional DME reactor are compared with the available data. Then, the performance and operability of the proposed structure is compared with the hydrogen membrane, water membrane and conventional reactors. The simulation results show that the DME production capacity in the dual membrane reactor is improved about 17.2% compared to the conventional process. Higher DME production rate due to shift the thermodynamic equilibrium limitations, and lower CO2 production are the main advantages of the proposed reactor. (C) 2016 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.