The longwall gob (mined-out) area is one of the main places that are prone to coal spontaneous combustion and most of the residual coal in it is in oxygen-depleted air as it is a semi-enclosed space. A DSC (Differential scanning calorimetry) test system was designed to accurately test the heat generation of coal oxidation in different oxygen concentration atmosphere, based on which the kinetics parameters (activation energy and pre-exponential factor) of coal low-temperature oxidation in oxygen-depleted air were solved out. The results show that the kinetics parameters present obvious stage features and the lower the oxygen concentration is, the smaller is the difference of the kinetics parameters that in different oxidation stages. When the oxygen concentration is lower than 5% and 3% for jet coal and meagre coal respectively, the kinetics parameters of slow oxidation start to be greater than that of rapid oxidation. Both in the slow oxidation and rapid oxidation stage, with the decrease of oxygen concentration, kinetics parameters present significant decline on the whole while in different oxygen concentration range, the decline rate is different. It's concluded that when assessing the residual coal's self-heating risk, we need to use the corresponding kinetics parameters of coal oxidation in the oxygen concentration of the location where the residual coal is and the safety factor will be greater to only use the kinetics parameters of coal oxidation in slow oxidation stage. This study is of great significance for the assessment and control of the self-heating risk of coal that in different oxygen concentration atmospheres of the longwall gob areas. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.