As a by-product of the coal washing process, the methods involving the resource utilization of coal slime are very few because of its strong agglomeration and large water content. In this work, we propose a new way to dispose of coal slime, which involves preparing semi-coke water slurry (SCWS) with coal slime. When using sodium humate as dispersant at a dosage of 0.8 wt%, the solid concentration of ordinary SCWS reached a maximum (63.8 wt%), and the concentration improved to 65.3 wt% after adding 15 wt% coal slime, and the calorific value of the slurry (18.07 MJ/kg) that can meet the Chinese standard (GB/T 18855-2002). The role of coal slime in improving the ability of SCWS is to optimize the particle size distribution as a small size material: additionally, it can improve the hydrophilicity of particulates through oxygen-containing groups and minerals, which increased the performance of SONS. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.