Abstract: Existing research that relevant to thermodynamic disaster is artificially divided into gas disaster,fire disaster and coal dust disaster. The drawback of the division is that it fails to systematically construct a theoretical system, which makes the systematical and synthetical prevention and control of this kind of disaster unavailable. In this paper, a large number of serious and extraordinary coal mine accidents happened in China and other countries are collected and analyzed,based on which the concept of thermodynamic disaster is proposed. The theoretical system of thermody- namic disasters is also constructed. Several hot issues about thermodynamic disasters are analyzed and discussed,which are the compound disaster involving coal mine gas and coal fire,the safety of low gas coal mine,the role of gas drain- age played in the prevention of gas accidents,the relationship between accident and management,the efficiency of inert medium in preventing and extinguishing coal fires,the effect of mine explosion-proof facilities,self-escape after thermo- dynamic disaster. Seven misconceptions are pointed out.