Abstract: As an important part of clean coal technology, coal water slurry has the advantages of easy storage and transportation, high combustion efficiency, clean and environmental protection, etc. It is of great significance to realize the clean utilization of coal resources. With the development of technology, the research and application of coal water slurry combustion technology are becoming increasingly diversified. The development process and application of coal water slurry combustion technology in our country are introduced briefly. The influence of coal water slurry fuel characteristics on combustion process, ignition temperature, burnout and slagging is analyzed. The mainstream coal water slurry atomization suspension combustion and coal water slurry circulating fluidized combustion processes are described. The technical principles of the two combustion processes are compared, and their respective characteristics and application scenarios are analyzed. Compared with coal water slurry atomization suspension combustion, coal water slurry circulating fluidized combustion technology is based on coal water slurry granulation and feeding technology, circulating fluidized bed furnace desulfurization and low nitrogen combustion technology, which fundamentally solves the problem of high temperature coking and slagging and high emission of original pollutants in coal water slurry atomization combustion, and carries out new optimization of relevant design based on flow pattern reconstruction technology. The problems that may be encountered in the development of coal water slurry circulating fluidized bed boiler and the direction that should be worked hard are pointed out.