In the field of high-pressure natural gas purification, it is a challenging problem to improve the performance of coalescence filter element. In this work, the filtration performance of filter elements with the same coalescence filter materials and combination of different coalescence filter materials were studied, and the effects of the arrangement of coalescence layers on the filtration efficiency, pressure drop, saturation and liquid distribution were analyzed by using the experimental device for the filtration performance of coalescence filter element. The results showed that the filtration efficiency of the filter element composed of the same filter materials increased with the decreasing pore size of filter material, but due to the higher pressure drop, the overall filtration performance was the worst for the minimum pore size case. The coalescence layer arrangement of oleophobic layer in front and oleophilic layer in back could improve the filtration efficiency of the filter element and reduce the secondary entrainment of droplets. The filtration efficiency of the filter element staggered with two layers of the same filter material was significantly higher than that of the single-layer filter material, and the pressure drop was relatively low, which greatly improved the overall filtration performance. Further increase of the number of oleophobic layers on the inlet side delayed the increase of pressure drop and improved the operation life, and the steady-state quality factor of the filter element reached the maximum value (0.30 kPa-1). The influence of coalescence layer arrangement on the filtration performance of filter element was mainly realized by changing the liquid distribution form, and the channel structure change of last filter layer was the main reason for the filtration performance difference of filter elements with various coalescence layer arrangements.