The old mining area in Pingdingshan coalfield has the following problems: long mining service life, many remaining coal pillars, and great difficulty in mining; to extend the service life of the mine, realize cost saving and efficiency increasing, it is urgent to recover the remaining coal pillars, but the mining of isolated island face faces the problem of reasonable retention of waterproof coal pillars, if the protection is not good, it is easy to cause mine water damage and increase the mining cost. Therefore, in view of the practical engineering problems faced by the field, aiming at eliminating or reducing the goaf water disaster, this paper adopts numerical simulation research methods to optimize the original design scheme and carry out comparative analysis, dynamically reappear the surrounding rock stress field, displacement field and plastic failure law under multi face mining and roadway mining, and carry out engineering practice application. The results show that there is a certain thickness of elastic core area before and after mining with 25m coal pillar width. The deformation of surrounding rock is small, which is conducive to roadway maintenance, without obvious stress concentration. It can meet the actual needs of the project. The mining face has achieved safe mining, without water inrush accident in the goaf, and the coal resources have been recovered to the maximum extent. The research results are left over to similar mining areas in China The safe recovery of coal pillar can be used for reference.