The invention discloses a low pass filter, an active power filtering device and a harmonic detection method based on the active power filtering device.. The low pass filter is formed by an IIR (infinite impulse response) filter and an MA (moving average) filter in a cascade manner. The active power filtering device comprises a main circuit, a mutual inductance regulating circuit, an AD (analog-to-digital) sampling circuit, a detection circuit and a control circuit, wherein the main circuit is used for injecting compensation current to a three-phase power grid, the detection circuit utilizes the low pass filter, and the control circuit is used for forming a driving signal of the main circuit. Through utilizing the active power filtering device, the harmonic detection method disclosed by the invention comprises the following steps of: sequentially detecting, regulating and carrying out AD sampling on load current of the three-phase power grid; extracting harmonic current; and forming a driving signal according to the harmonic current. The invention prevents a problem that the separation of direct current amount and alternating current amount of active current and reactive current is poor in the traditional harmonic detection technique, improves the filtering precision, has quick dynamic response and can quickly and exactly detect the content of the harmonic current in the power grid.