A membrane reactor was developed for coupling heterogeneously catalyzed transesterification and glycerol extraction using a membrane contactor. The membrane contactor has two compartments of 0.4L separated by a nylon or microporous membrane. Ion-exchange resins were used as a catalyst under mild conditions with or without glycerol extraction. Water and ethanol were used as the extraction phase. The mass transfer coefficients of the reaction medium components were estimated using a synthetic reaction medium and different extraction phases. The reaction was followed by triglyceride conversion measuring free glycerol and combined glycerol. Triglyceride conversion increased by 18% when using an anionic resin (Amberlyst (R) A26) and ethanol as the extracting phase. A simplified mass transfer model was developed and applied to simulate the coupled system. The simulated results indicated that a ratio of membrane area to the reactor volume of 2.2 cm(-1) results in a 97.3% reduction of the glycerol content in the reaction medium. These results demonstrate the potential of coupling transesterification and a membrane contactor by shifting the reaction equilibrium and reducing the purification steps of the process. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.