Water selective silica membranes were prepared fur use as membrane reactor for synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) by methanol dehydration. Silica membranes formed on a Porous SUS tube by ultrasonic spray Pyrolysis (USP) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) as precursor. The CVD-derived membranes formed higher level of trade-off line between water permeance and water/methanol selectivity than that of the USP-derived membranes. The membrane reactor possessing water permeance of $1.2 imes10^{-7};mol;{cdot};m^{-2};{cdot};S^{-1};{cdot};Pa^{-1}$ and water/methanol selectivity of 10 exhibited increase in methanol conversion of about $20\%$ comparing to conventional reactor system. These findings led us to conclude that the dehydration membrane reactor simultaneously separating the water vapour produced in the reaction zone was effective in increasing the reaction conversion.