Abstract: In order to reveal the acoustic emission energy and destruction characteristics of coal rock under uniaxial compression, a uniaxial compression test was performed on the 12-top coal and its basic roof of Buertai Coal Mine. Acoustic emission signal parameters of coal rock samples under uniaxial compression were collected and analyzed, and the differences between coal rock samples and acoustic emission impact curves and energy curves during uniaxial compression were obtained. The study found that the final failure modes of medium-grained sandstone and coal under uniaxial compression are significantly different. The medium-grained sandstone has a gentle failure process and destruction process of coal is fierce. The peak number of impact all appear before the peak of the stress curve, and the number of acoustic emission events of the medium-grained sandstone specimens is much smaller than coal specimens , which verified that coal samples are more severely damaged than medium-grained sandstone and provided ideas for early warning of dynamic disasters.