Producing and using renewable fuels for transportation is one approach for sustainable energy future for the world. A renewable fuel contributes lesser global climate change. The present work reports on the utilization of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) as a primary fuel with diethyl ether (DEE) as an ignition enhancer in a direct injection diesel engine. LPG has a simpler hydrocarbon structure than conventional fuels. DEE is recently reported as a renewable fuel and to be a low-emission high-quality diesel fuel replacement. A single cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled naturally aspirated DI diesel engine having rated output of 3.7 kW at 1500 rpm was used for the experiments. Measurements were made to study the performance, combustion and emissions characteristics. From the results, it is observed that, the brake thermal efficiency lower by about 23% at full load with a reduction of about 65% NO emission than the diesel operation. The maximum reduction in smoke and particulate emissions is observed to be about 85% and 89%, respectively, when compared to that of diesel operation, however an increase in CO and HC emissions was observed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.