Coal spontaneous combustion is one of the major natural disasters faced in coal mines. The accurate prediction of the thermal risk of coal is of great importance. However, there isn't a widely accepted approach to get the oxidation process of coal that under adiabatic condition or in a specific environment under mine at present. To demonstrate whether the advanced kinetics simulation method could be employed to obtain the accurate oxidation process of coal for determining the coal's thermal risk in the mine design phase and mining phase, DSC experiments were conducted by C80 micro-calorimeter to get the heat behavior of coal, based on which the kinetic parameters can be solved and the oxidation process of coal can be predicted. The results showed that the kinetics based simulation method was successfully used to predict the adiabatic temperature rise process of coal for risk prediction. The deviation between the predicted curve and tested curve that obtained by adiabatic test is small enough to be accepted. Kinetics based simulation method is a promising candidate, instead of adiabatic test, to assess the propensity of coal to spontaneous combustion, which can play an important role in the design phase of the mine and mining area. Moreover, through establishing the heat balance equation of residual coal and with the aid of kinetics based simulation method, the oxidation process of coal that in the suffocation zone of the gob was also accurately predicted. According to the index t(70) (the time required for coal to reach 70 degrees C) and v(min) (the lower limit of the advancing speed of the working face) obtained from the predicted curve, the thermal risk of coal was predicted to guide the further adjustment of the advancing speed of the working face, the amount of the injected mud and the determination that whether to add other fire prevention measures. Kinetics based simulation method, be of great practical importance in risk prediction of coal that in the gob, can be also used as a convenient tool to guide the safe production in the actual mining process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.