In this paper, we firstly used a new oxidizing agent to treat raw coal and got an enhancement of the solubility in organic solvents, making it possible to prepare carbon nanofibers by using coal and electrospinning. In addition, we found that the addition of oxidized coal would cause the fibers to inner-connect. Results showed that when the addition of oxidized coal was 15 wt%, the fibers would show a high conductivity, moreover, the coal/PAN nanofibers containing of 50 wt% oxidized coal had a specific capacitance of 259.7 F g(-1) at a current density of 1 A g(-1) in three-electrode system, together with an excellent cycling performance. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.