**Abstract**

Growing anxieties about the continued depletion of fossil fuel reserves, improving the performance of diesel engines, and mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have made the search for alternative fuels for diesel engines more imperative. Hydrogenation Derived Renewable Diesel (HDRD) is recognized as a sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective alternative to petroleum-based diesel (PBD) fuel for compression ignition (CI) engines. This may be because the physicochemical properties of HDRD are similar to that of PBD fuel. The current effort examines the performance and emission characteristics of HDRD in unmodified CI engines. Performance emissions characteristics such as power, torque, brake specific fuel consumption, thermal efficiency, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and exhaust gas temperature were interrogated and compared with that of PBD fuel in a CI engine. The outcome of the study shows that HDRD is better than biodiesel and a sustainable replacement for PDB fuel to achieve improved performance and reduced emissions of CI engines. Going forward, more investigations are needed to further simplify the preparation and democratize the utilization of HDRD as CI fuels for various applications.

**Keywords:** compression ignition engine, HDRD, performance, emission, fuel, renewable
