The diesel pre-heater has being used in cabin heating and coolant heating of engine to reduce the engine warm up time for commercial vehicle. The pre-heaters are classified as diesel spray combustor and it forms diffusion flame. By using swirler, a recirculation flow of hot product gases is established near the fuel nozzle and it helps the maintaining of diffusion flame. The design difference of swirler can affect on reaction characteristics and temperature distribution inside pre-heater. The purpose of this study is the investigation of the effect of swirler configuration on combustion characteristics. To solve spray combustion problem, the Euler-Lagrange approach discrete model is used to track droplet trajectory and evaporation history. The PDF equilibrium model is used for chemical reaction model. These models are implemented into the FLUENT code.