Coal-water slurry is considered to have the potential for displacing petroleum used in the existing oil-fired industrial and utility boilers. The combustion of coal-water slurry(CWS) is a complex process and little is known about the detailed mechanism. In this paper the combustion behavior of a single suspended droplet of CWS in hot gas stream was investigated. The effect of coal particle size, water content in droplet, initial droplet size, ambient temperature and oxygen fraction in ambient gas were studied. The results are as follows; (1) Increasing the oxygen fraction in ambient gas considerably reduced the char combustion time. (2) The variation of water content and coal particle size in droplet showed little effect on the combustion behavior. (3) In the relatively high temperature ambient gas, the water evaporation time became shorter and the combustion process was stable.