Abstract: Iron tailing porous ceramics were prepared by carbothermal reduction method using argillaceous fine-grained iron tailings and graphite as the raw materials. The oxides and mineral phases with low thermal conductivity in tailings were transformed into carbides with high thermal conductivity to overcome the limitation of low thermal conductivity with high porosity. The influence factors on the structure and performance of iron tailings porous ceramics were analyzed by using control variable method. The results showed that the structure and properties of iron tailing porous ceramics were greatly affected by the sintering temperature and graphite content, and less affected by the holding time, and the performance index of iron tailings porous ceramics can be regulated by changing the experimental conditions. The range of the apparent porosity, the thermal conductivity and the compressive strength was 39.30%~82.30%, 0.53 W/(m·K)~1.52 W/(m·K) and 0.78 MPa~15.02 MPa, respectively. The influence of porosity was much greater than that of the generation of SiC in thermal conductivity. The mechanical properties were greatly affected by the porosity. The properties of iron tailing porous ceramics were the best with the apparent porosity and the thermal conductivity are 81.07% and 0.58 W/(m·K) when the graphite content, the sintering temperature and the holding time were 25%, 1 600 ℃ and 2 h, respectively. Compared with ordinary iron tailing porous ceramics with the same porosity, the thermal conductivity was increased by 6.6 times, which provides a new idea for the research and utilization of iron tailings.