Aiming at the location problem in tailings pipeline leakage detection, the leakage signal is analyzed based on infrasonic wave, and the collected infrasonic wave signal is decomposed by adaptive noise complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMDAN), through the correlation coefficient, the intrinsic mode component (IMF) which is highly correlated with the original infrasonic wave signal is selected and combined with the residual component to reconstruct the signal, and the infrasonic wave signal after noise removal is obtained. Then, the second time cross-correlation time delay estimation algorithm is used to calculate the time difference of the leakage signal received by the acoustic sensor at both ends of the tailings pipeline, and the leakage point is located based on the principle of pipeline leakage location. The simulated leakage experiment was carried out on the tailings pipeline of the relevant mine. The results show that: after the CEEMDAN algorithm reconstructs the signal, the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal is larger and the root mean square error is smaller, and the denoising effect is better; the quadratic cross-correlation time delay estimation algorithm can locate the leakage point within ±30 meters, and the relative error is controlled within 10%, making the positioning more accurate.