Corner tangentially fired boilers (CTFBs), in which the burners are tangentially arranged at the corners, have been widely used in the modern thermal power plants in China. However, because of the variation in coal and inherent characteristics of the corner tangentially fired furnace, slagging and high-temperature corrosion on the surfaces of water walls and large temperature deviation at the furnace outlet are often detected during operation. In comparison to CTFBs, wall tangentially fired boilers (WTFBs), including wall-center tangentially fired boilers (WCTFBs) and wall-off-center tangentially fired boilers (WOTFBs), in which the burners are tangentially arranged on the walls and pulverized coal burns stably, are believed to be able to solve the above-mentioned problems. The commercially available software package Fluent is used to simulate the performances of different tangential arrangements of burners, including CTFB, WCTFB, and WOTFB, in the flow and combustion characteristics of pulverized coal in a 600 MW utility boiler. The results show that, in contrast to the CTFB, the highspeed airflow erosion does not happen to the wall tangential burners. In the WCTFB, the high-temperature flame center is lowered, benefiting the burnout of coal particles, the decrease of the carbon content in fly ash, and the reduction of energy loss. In addition, combustion of coal in a local reducing atmosphere is avoided, which reduces the possibility of slagging and high-temperature corrosion. Because of the entrainment effects, uneven wall heating is eased. The flue gas temperature deviation and overheating at the furnace outlet are restrained, benefitted from the symmetric distributions of velocity and temperature. The WCTFB is concluded as the best tangential burner arrangement among the three arrangements studied in this work.