In order to study the combustion of coal water slurry (CWS) in fluidized bed boilers, artificial CWS droplet spheres were used for simulation of the spheres formed from CWS droplets which fall from the furnace top to the bed. The artificial spheres were introduced to a bench-scale fluidized bed furnace. Quartz sand was used as the bed material. The influence of the operation conditions (e.g., bed temperature, superficial gas velocity, and bed height) on the combustion characteristics was investigated. The bed temperatures were varied at 650, 750, 850, and 950 degrees C. The gas velocities were in a range of fluidization numbers W (defined as U/U-mf) of 3, 3.5, 4, and 4.5. The bed heights were varied 30, 50, 70, and 90 mm. The CWS spheres were taken out at five residence times (15, 30, 45, 60, and 75 s). The mass ratio of the residue fixed carbon to parent fixed carbon was calculated for studying the influential factors. Under the reference conditions, it is shown that the burnout time is less than 150 s. The grey relational analysis was used to study the degree of relative importance of the influential factors. The results showed that the influence of the bed height is the least, the fluidization number has the greatest influence in the early and later stages, and the bed temperature contributes most in the intermediate stages.