Abstract: Coal fly ash （CFA） is a bulk industrial solid waste. Its open-air stockpiling not only occupies land but also causes problems such as dust pollution. CFA contains trace amounts of heavy metal elements, which can leach into soil and water bodies through rainfall, causing heavy metal pollution. Therefore, the removal of heavy metal elements is a crucial step for the resource recovery and recycling of CFA. To remove heavy metals from CFA, this study utilized fly ash from a coal-fired power plant in Shanxi Province as the raw material and employed a combined method of magnetic separation and pressurized acid leaching for heavy metal removal. The heavy metal content in the raw CFA and the treated products was analyzed, and the potential ecological risk index before and after treatment was assessed. The results showed that magnetic separation could preliminarily remove some heavy metal elements from the CFA. Further applying pressurized acid leaching to the non-magnetic fraction after magnetic separation could deeply remove the heavy metals within it. Through orthogonal experiments and single-factor experiments, it was determined that under pressurized acid leaching conditions of an acid concentration of 2.5 mol/L, a liquid-to-solid ratio of 10∶1, a leaching temperature of 160 ℃, and a leaching time of 3 h, the removal of heavy metals was significantly effective: the removal rates of Cd, Cr, and Pb were 79.9%, 61.7%, and 57.6%, respectively; while the removal rates of As, Se, and Hg reached 96.6%, 99.2%, and 93.3%, respectively. After the combined magnetic separation-pressurized acid leaching treatment, the proportion of residual fractions for Cd, Cr, Pb, As, and Se in the fly ash increased to 92%, 95%, 97%, 88%, and 59%, respectively. This combined process effectively removed most of the mobile fractions of heavy metals from the target CFA, significantly increased the proportion of residual heavy metals, thereby reducing the environmental mobility of heavy metals and enhancing the environmental safety of the sample. This study provides a new approach for heavy metal removal from fly ash and lays a theoretical foundation for CFA pollution control and resource utilization.