A CO 2 laser controlled well by specially designed double shutters was used to heat uniformly dispersed coal particles in nitrogen. The temperatures of the coal particles were measured using a highly accurate multiplepoint, two-color temperature measurement system. The average performance and characteristics of three kinds of coals with different volatile content were carefully investigated at various experimental conditions. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the proximate volatile matter content, particle size, and laser intensity are the three most important factors in the devolatilization process of coal particles under the laser heating condition;(2) the devolatilization processes can be separated into two parts by the proximate volatile matter contents of three coals, which suggests that two devolatilization schemes exist in each coal; (3) the effect of laser intensities on the devolatilization processes indicates that the devolatilization process cannot be well-characterized by only laser intensity; (4) the existence of cross points in the curves of weight loss and particle temperatures among the samples with different sizes are one of the important features of laser heating, which is distinctively different from other heating methods; (5) the variation in V/V 0 values of all three kinds of coals with particle temperatures exponentially depends on coal particle temperatures, and can be expressed as V/V 0 ) 9.0 × 10 -4 exp(5.3 × 10 -3 T p ) with R 2 ) 0.8833; (6) the change in V/V 0 of W coal with different particle sizes is highly dependent on particle temperatures and can be expressed as V/V 0 ) 1.3 × 10 -3 exp(5.2 × 10 -3 T p ) with R 2 ) 0.9169; (7) a comprehensive expression, which includes volatile matter content, in situ energy density per surface area of coal particle, final particle temperature, and in situ particle properties, such as swelling, shrinking, emissivity, etc., should be further investigated.