Fuel spray and atomization characteristics play an important role in the performance of internal combustion engines. As the reserves of petroleum fuel are expected to be depleted within a few decades, finding alternative fuels that are economically viable and sustainable to replace the petroleum fuel has attracted much research attention. In this work, the spray and atomization characteristics were investigated for commercial No. 2 diesel fuel, biodiesel (FAME) derived from waste cooking oil (B100), 20% biodiesel blended diesel fuel (B20), renewable diesel fuel produced in house, and civil aircraft jet fuel (Jet-A). Droplet diameters and particle size distributions were measured by a laser diffraction particle analyzing system and the spray tip penetrations and cone angles were acquired using a high speed imaging technique. All experiments were conducted by employing a common-rail high-pressure fuel injection system with a single-hole nozzle under room temperature and pressure. The experimental results showed that biodiesel and jet fuel had different features compared with diesel. Longer spray tip penetration and larger droplet diameters were observed for B100. The smaller droplet size of the Jet-A were believed to be caused by its relatively lower viscosity and surface tension. B20 showed similar characteristics to diesel but with slightly larger droplet sizes and shorter tip penetration. Renewable diesel fuel showed closer droplet size and spray penetration to Jet-A with both smaller than diesel. As a result, optimizing the trade-off between spray volume and droplet size for different fuels remains a great challenge. However, high-pressure injection helps to optimize the trade-off of spray volume and droplet sizes. Furthermore, it was observed that the smallest droplets were within a region near the injector nozzle tip and grew larger along the axial and radial direction. The variation of droplet diameters became smaller with increasing injection pressure. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.