Abstract: Fe₂O₃ is a kind of pulverized coal combustion improver suitable for blast furnace. TG-DSC analysis is employed to study the combustion mechanism,and the result shows that FeCO-R weakens bridged bond of carbon structural units and changes crystal structures,resulting in lowered activation energy of the pulverized coal and accelerated combustion. Combustion conditions of the blast furnace are simulated,and then unburned coal are collected and analyzed by XRD and SEM. The results show that with the addition of the combustion improver Fe₂O₃,microcrystal parameters of the unburned coal increase,and height and diameter of aromatic lamella increase by 0.001 1 nm and 0.001 2 nm respectively; particles size of the unburned coal powder decreases by 3.48 μm with irregular morphological appearances.