Monodisperse droplet spray dryer (MDSD) has demonstrated great advantages in the production of uniform sized particle products. The drying performance of such facility is improved. By resorting to the discrete phase model (DPM) and the reaction engineering approach (REA) based on drying model

a 3D CFD model is developed to describe a complete MDSD consisting of a small droplet pre-dispersion chamber and a big drying chamber. The model allows to investigate the influence of introducing swirling flows in the pre-dispersion chamber and the drying chamber on particle trajectory and drying dynamics. It is shown that the introduction of the swirling flow at an air inlet angle of 30° can offer decent performance. When both chambers have swirling flows

the co-current scheme is 2% better than the counter-current scheme in terms of reaching lower particle moisture content. Compared with the case without any swirling flow

the particle moisture content can be 30% lower. To achieve the same moisture content

with the introduction of the swirling flow

the dryer can be shortened by nearly 12%.