The invention belongs to the technical field of needle coke, and discloses a process for producing coal-based needle coke. The process comprises the following steps: feeding coal-tar pitch and solventinto a mixing device, mixing, and feeding into a sedimentation device; separating to obtain a light phase and a heavy phase, feeding the light phase into a reduced pressure distillation tower, and reclaiming the solvent to obtain purified coal-tar pitch, and feeding the purified coal-tar pitch into a coking tower, and performing coking treatment to obtain coal-based needle coke and coked oil gas.According to the process, the solvent in the process contains light fractions of less than or equal to 200 DEG C; compared with solvent containing a great number of heavy fractions, the solvent has the advantages that the solvent has relatively low density, the light phase formed after the solvent with relatively low density is mixed with the coal-tar pitch can be separated from the heavy phase more easily, and the solvent can be more easily separated from the purified coal-tar pitch when the solvent containing a great number of light fractions in the light phase is removed; therefore, the energy consumption for reclaiming solvent can be reduced, the recovery rate of solvent can be increased, and the production cost can be reduced.