Abstract The idea of producing water-containing slurries and emulsions based on Diesel fuel, oil, coal, and coal processing waste has spread around the world. One of the ways to make the combustion of such fuels more efficient is through the micro-explosive droplet breakup, that is, the secondary atomization directly in the car combustion chambers and furnaces of boiler units. Here we study experimentally how micro-explosion affects the energy-related and environmental parameters of the combustion of slurry fuel droplets based on coal and its processing wastes. We present the results of experiments determining the threshold temperatures and ignition delay times, dimensions of the flame cloud of the dispersing particles, and anthropogenic emissions. The results obtained indicate that the micro-explosive atomization of fuel droplets can improve the environmental performance by up to 40%. The comprehensive analysis of the prospects of using coal-water slurries containing petrochemicals instead of coal has shown that the relative performance indicator of slurry fuel is 1.7–3.3 times higher than that of coal. With varying values of weight coefficients (environment, energy, and cost), the dimensionless slurry fuel performance coefficient may increase by 3–30% as compared to the case of equal values for these coefficients.