The simultaneous determination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur in coal mostly adopts near-infrared spectrometry or middle-infrared spectrometry in existing reports. When the sample amount was controlled at 80-120mg and the mass ratio of tungsten trioxide to sample was 3∶1, a simultaneous determination method of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur in coal by high temperature combustion thermal conductivity was established. The experiments showed that the determination results of four elements in two coal samples were consistent with the certified values when the sample amount was 80, 100 and 120mg. The variances were between 0.000133 and 0.0621 and F values were between 0.71 and 3.00. F values were all less than F_0.05=5.05 within 95% confidence limit, indicating that the precision under three sampling conditions had no significant difference. The detection limit of method for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur was 0.026, 0.015, 0.004 and 0.044mg, respectively. The lower determination limit for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur was 0.194, 0.037, 0.096 and 0.185mg, respectively. The proposed method was applied for the determination of four elements including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur in certified reference materials of coal. The results were basically consistent with the certified values, and the relative standard deviations (RSD, n=6) were between 0.12% and 2.8%.