As an important coal - derived carbon material, coal - based carbon materials have the advantages of high specific surfacearea, good conductivity, abundant resources and low price, and have broad application prospects in the field of energy storage.The preparation methods of coal-based carbon materials mainly include activation method, template method and heteroatom doping method. The activation method is a commonly used method for preparing coal-based carbon materials. By activating coal with gas or chemical reagents athigh temperatures, coal - based carbon materials with high specific surface area and rich pore structure can be obtained. The template method can prepare carbon materials with special pore structure by selecting appropriate template materials, with uniform pore diameter and orderly structure. The heteroatom doping method is a method that introduces heteroatoms into coal-based carbon materials to regulate their electronic structure and electrochemical properties. This method can not only form functional groups on the surface of carbon materials and improve the reaction efficiency of the materials, but also generates pseudocapacitance through redox reactions to improve theelectrochemical properties of the material. There are many types of coal-based electrode materials prepared with coal as precursor, including coal-based amorphous carbon, coal-based porous carbon, coal-based graphite, coal-based carbon nanofibers, coal-based grapheneand coal-based graphene quantum dots. Compared with traditional carbon electrode material precursors (natural graphite, petroleum coke,pitch coke, etc.), the aromatic lamellar structure and alkyl branches of coal-based carbon materials have special properties. The aromaticlamellae are graphitized at high temperature to form laterally extended graphite crystal layers, and alkyl branches form carbonintermediates or small molecule clusters with active groups, further constructing new carbon materials, giving coal-based carbon materialsthe advantage of manufacturing electrode materials. In the field of electrochemical energy storage, coal-based electrode materials havebeen widely used. Researchers have successfully applied coal-based carbon materials into energy storage devices such as supercapacitors,lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and potassium-ion batteries, and achieved good performance. In summary, coal-based carbon materials, as a new energy material with great potential, have broad application prospects and important research significance. However, there are still many difficulties and challenges in the current research on coal-based electrode materials in the field of energy storage.For example, in the processing of raw coal, the use of strong oxidants, the need for high-temperature, high-pressure environments andspecial protective atmospheres will cause environmental pollution waste and by-products. Therefore, looking forward to future research directions, it is not only necessary to optimize the preparation process of coal-based carbon materials, improve the electrochemical properties of the materials, and expand the application of coal-based carbon materials in the field of energy storage, but also to use green, safeand economical methods to prepare high - quality materials on a large scale, in order to provide support for the clean, efficient andlow-carbon utilization of coal, and provide a reference for the development of advanced coal-derived carbon materials.