As a nondestructive testing end, acoustic emission is widely used in many fields. Aiming at the problem that acoustic emission signals are difficult to separate from background noise, a noise reduction method based on Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) and improved wavelet threshold is proposed. Firstly, the acoustic emission signal is decomposed by CEEMD. The demarcation point of signal-noise component is determined by the ratio of peak width. The noise component is denoised by improved wavelet threshold. The denoised component is reconstructed with the rest of the component to get the final denoising result. The simulation signal and the mechanical seal AE experimental signal demonstrate that the proposed method is more effective than the traditional wavelet denoising and CEMD forced denoising.