Green needle coke (GNC) was oxidized by mixing acid HNO3/H2SO4.The resulted oxidized material was named as intermediates which can be easily separated into two parts,water dispersible and water non-dispersible part.These two parts were then activated by KOH respectively.The resultant two kinds of nanoporous carbons have different porous network when using the same KOH weight.XPS and XRD were used to investigate surface functional groups and microstructure of the intermediates respec-tively.The pore structures of the resultant nanoporous carbons were evaluated using N2 adsorption/desorption and TEM analysis.The relationships of intermediates surface properties and structural characteristics with porous structure of the derived carbons were figured out.In 6 M KOH electrolyte,water dispersible intermediate derived carbon sample GNC-A10-3 has superior performance as electric double layer capacitor electrode with a capacitance of 248 F g-1 at the current density of 40A g-1 and the rate performance expressed in the capacitance retention C40/0.05 is 76%.While water non-dispersible intermediate derived carbon sample GNC-R10-3 possesses larger volumetric specific capacitance than GNC-A10-3.