Abstract: With the increase of burial depth of coal seam, the gas pressure and gas content of coal seam tend to rise, resulting in the serious problem of gas concentration exceeding the limit.Generally, adding surfactant aqueous solution is an important technical means to reduce coal seam gas emission.In this paper, the application of surfactant aqueous solution in the prevention and control of coal mine gas disaster is analyzed by the literature survey method.The results are as follow: ① based on the consideration of safety and gentleness effects, the descending order of the optimization of surfactants is amphoteric and biological, non-ionic, anionic and cationic, and most non-ionic and amphoteric surfactants have good compound performance.② In the test concentration range, except for biological surfactants, an inflection point for the variations of surface tension and contact angle with solution concentration can be observed for other types of surfactant aqueous solutions, and the corresponding critical micelle concentration (CMC) is 0.1 %.Moreover, the descending order of the wettability effects of these surfactants is anionic, non-ionic, amphoteric, cationic and biological.③ The addition of surfactant aqueous solution can significantly inhibit the desorption-diffusion capacity of gas in coal, which is closely related to the wetting spreading effect and blocking effect of aqueous solution.