Coal gasification tar residue (CGTR) is a kind of industrial solid waste produced in the coal utilization process. It demands being correctly disposed due to the toxicity with some carcinogenic aromatic compounds. High heat value of CGTR indicates that it can be a useful energy resource. In this work, 22 solvents with different properties were used to extract CGTR and the Hansen solubility parameter theory was applied to relate with the experimental results. The basic thermo-physical properties of the extracting solvents were analyzed based on the physical property estimation from Aspen plus software. It was supposed that the solvent systems like toluene, n-butyl acetate and n-butyl acetate + dimethyl carbonate could be promising extracting solvents for the effective separation of CGTR in practice. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.