Abstract: Currently in the boiler operation of coal-fired power plants, there exist some common problems such as unstable combustion, low combustion efficiency and even boiler leakage, which are all directly related to the coal particle velocity in the pipeline. In order to measure the coal particle velocity accurately and explore the relationship between the velocity and boiler combustion, taking the coal mill in a power plant as the test platform, two electrostatic sensors based on electrostatic method and correlation velocity measurement theory are installed on Pipes 2 and 3 to measure the velocity. Through the analysis on the measurement data and the comparison with those from the boiler combustion monitoring system in DCS, the imbalance between the particle velocities in the coal pipes is observed and the impact of coal particle velocities on boiler combustion is also verified. At last, the combustion control and optimization scheme based on coal particle velocity measurement is proposed.