This work presents a hypothesis of how steam flow effect the chip flow in the Double disc (DD) refiner and test it with a numerical simulation. DD refiners are often considered one of the most energy efficient refiner models. However, feeding chips into these machines is not as easy as feeding single disc refiners due to the rotating geometries. It is our belief that to increase energy efficiency in refining we need to increase also the production rates. The authors have previously noticed that in a standard DD rotor, steam flowed both in the same direction as the flow of woodchips and in the opposite direction. It is our hypothesis that backwards flowing steam in and in close proximity to the critical transition from the non-rotating geometry to the rotating geometry is negative for the material flow. To evaluate the hypothesis a new rotor was designed to eliminate the backwards flow. The authors have previously presented a two way coupled multiphase model with steam flow modeled with Computational Fluid Dynamics and wood chips modeled as groups of connected spherical particles with Discrete Element Method with a momentum exchange model. This model was utilized to model the flow of steam and woodchips in a DD under normal operational parameters, with the conventional rotor and with the new rotor. The throughput of wood chips was evaluated and normalized with regards to the chip flow to the refiner. The flow was considerable more stable in the new rotor, the throughput was close to 100 % for the observed time window, and the steam flow was more uniform. The results of the simulation supports the hypothesis. The next step in the research would be to test the new rotor in full scale operation.