Abstract: Coal dust explosion is one of the main forms of thermal power disaster in mine. In order to clarify the research situation of coal dust explosion and prevent the occurrence of coal dust explosion accident, this paper summarized the domestic and overseas research status of coal dust explosion mechanism, explosion characteristics, explosion propagation laws and coal dust explosion suppression technology in theory, experiment and numerical simulation. At the same time, the prospect of coal dust explosion was put forward. The results show that the study of the mechanism of coal dust explosion is in the thermodynamic stage, the study of coal dust explosion characteristics and propagation law remains in the macroscopic characteristic parameters, the anti-explosion measures need to be improved and the development of numerical simulation software for independent intellectual property rights for coal dust explosion should be strengthened.