Aiming at the leakage problem of boiler tubes in power plants，the location method based on time delay estimation was studied. The leakage signal of the furnace tube was simulated by the external high-frequency sound signal，and the multi group delay value was measured by the cross-correlation algorithm. The location equation was established according to the distance formula，and then solved by Newton iterative method，by which the leakage point coordinate was obtained. The experimental results show that the time-delay is effective only for impulsive sound source signals，and when it is the continuous periodic source，the estimation of time-delay is in the range of -T/2~T/2 （where T is the period of the source signal）. In a certain range，the higher sampling rate results in the higher delay value precision and the better effect of location；when compared with the sound speed，the sampling rate has greater impact on the location results.