Performance Evaluation of Cement-Stabilized Oil Shale Semicoke as Base or Subbase Course Construction Material

Oil shale semicoke is a hazardous byproduct in oil shale retorting process. In Jilin province, China, abundant oil shale resources are mainly used for retorting shale oil accompanying with a large number of oil shale semicoke slags, which will generally cause environmental pollution and disposal problems. If oil shale semicoke can be utilized as a road base or subbase course construction material, it will be a great help to the disposal of a long-term accumulated oil shale semicoke in landfill sites. Moreover, the resource treatment of oil shale semicoke in road project construction could obtain positive social and economic benefits. Subsequently, we conducted a series of laboratory tests to study the practicability of cement-stabilized oil shale semicoke as a road base or subbase course construction material, including the raw material test, modified compaction test, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) test, splitting tensile strength (STS) test, compressive resilient modulus (CRM) test, and freezing-thawing test. In this paper, test results were compared with the technical requirements of Chinese road base construction specification, preliminarily confirming that cement-stabilized oil shale semicoke can be used as a subbase course material of a highway or a base course material of a low-grade highway.