Solvent extraction is a potential technique for the production of coal-derived extracts which may be suitable as precursors for value-added carbon products. At present, the development of new and non-conventional markets for coal has resulted in the exploration of new applications such as slurry fuels, coal-based graphites, carbon-carbon composites and carbon anodes. However, for carbon products to perform acceptably in such applications, the ash content of the precursor must be less than 0.1%. Although, work to produce a low-ash (ca. 0.2%), low-sulfur coal-derived material had begun about a decade ago through solvent extraction using the solvent NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone), it was practically impossible to produce a coal-derived extract containing less than 0.2% ash. This is due to the presence of ultra-fine mineral matter particles and solvent soluble inorganic species. The principal objective of the present work was to investigate techniques for the separation of the coal-derived extract from the NMP-coal suspension after solvent extraction and to produce a ultra low-ash precursor. The significant contribution of this work was the development of a rigorous technique which has been implemented to produce coal-derived extracts with less than 0.1% ash. The existing solvent recovery procedure has been modified to exclude the presence of NMP-soluble inorganics which re-precipitated on the coal-derived extracts and were difficult to eliminate in the product extract. It has been shown that the alternate route of water-precipitation preferentially precipitates the coal-derived extract from the coal-NMP suspension with the NMP-water phase retaining most of the soluble inorganic species. Although, this technique does require subsequent solvent recovery from the water-phase by distillation, it reduces the concentration of ash in the extract, which can now be used to manufacture ultra-pure carbon precursors for specialized applications.