A photonic crystal polarization beam splitter based on the self-collimation effect is proposed. By means of the plane wave expansion method and the finite-difference time-domain method, we analyse the splitting mechanism in two alternative ways: performing a band gap structure analysis and simulating the field distribution. The results indicate that two beams of different polarizations can be split with an extinction ratio of nearly 20dB in a wavelength range of 90nm. The splitter may have practical applications in integrated photonic circuits.