Chemiluminescence combined with tomography (CT) can measure the three-dimensional information of the combustion flow field. In order to study the reconstruction effect of tomography, two different iterative algorithms including algebraic iteration (ART) and maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) are implemented. The reconstruction performance of the two algorithms is compared under different projection layout, different flow fields and different noise levels. The simulation results show that the non coplanar layout can effectively improve the reconstruction accuracy when the number of projections is small; When the number of projections reaches 9, the root mean square errors of ART algorithm and MLEM algorithm are both less than 2%, and MLEM algorithm is slightly better; MLEM algorithm has stronger anti-noise ability and is more suitable for reconstruction in complex experiment environment; However, the time cost of ART algorithm is superior. ART algorithm is 56.57% faster than the MLEM algorithm for 9 projections. The experimental results show that both algorithms give good reconstruction results, and the MLEM algorithm has higher computational accuracy than the ART algorithm. With more voxels divided in the flow field to be measured, the time cost consumed by MLEM is about 8.37 times higher than that of the ART algorithm.