In order to solve the problems of low energy utilization and large emissions of traditional excavators, an energy recovery system for electric excavator booms with supercapacitor as energy storage elements was designed. The potential energy when the excavating arm was lowered was finally stored in the supercapacitor in the form of electric energy, and it could be used directly when the excavating arm lifted. The mathematical model of the supercapacitor was establish and the main parameters of the supercapacitor were set. At the same time, the advantages of ADAMS, AMESim and MATLAB were used fully to realize data interaction between various software and make the simulation results more intuitive and reliable. The simulation results show that under the premise satisfying the traditional excavators requirements, energy consumption of the excavating boom is reduced by 20.72% within one working cycle. The system has good energy-saving and emission-reduction effects.