In the research on the thermal efficiency of atmospheric tube heating furnaces, it is necessary to conduct effective online measurement of thermal efficiency and select relatively reliable advanced control methods. On the basis of the research on the combustion mechanism of the heating furnace, the online measurement method based on the principle and data processing is used to process the thermal efficiency, and the "dynamic matrix control" is introduced in the process of optimizing the control of the heating furnace efficiency, which is compared with the traditional control method. The introduction of dynamic matrix control makes the system have a better control effect. At the same time, the "particle swarm algorithm" was selected to optimize the parameters of dynamic matrix control. In the optimization process of dynamic matrix parameters, the particle swarm algorithm relatively shortens the optimization time and improves the control quality, so as to achieve a more satisfactory control effect. Finally, compare with internal model control, it shows that dynamic matrix control can achieve relatively better control effect.