A novel fuel named the Full Distillation Fuel (FDF) is proposed in this paper to lower the full life-cycle cost of the end use of petroleum-based fuels and reduce emissions. FDF is a liquid fuel and its distillation temperature range covers gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel. There is no need to employ different distillation and refinery processes to produce gasoline and diesel fuels; instead, a single distillation process covering the entire range for gasoline, kerosene, and diesel can be used to produce FDF from petroleum directly. In the present work, an atmospheric distillation was used as one of the methods to produce FDF. The physical and chemical properties of FDF were measured. It indicates that C/H ratio, density and heat value of FDF vary between those of gasoline and diesel fuel and kinematic viscosity is close to the lower limit of diesel, which is benefit to high pressure injection. Cetane number of FDF is in the lower range of diesel fuel. The thermal efficiency, combustion and emission characteristics of a common-rail diesel engine fueled with FDF were experimentally investigated and compared with those burning the conventional diesel fuel and a diesel/gasoline blend fuel (dieseline). The experimental results show that the ignition delay, combustion duration changes little compared to diesel fuel while thermal efficiency is higher than diesel and dieseline; the pressure rise rate and heat release rate of FDF are higher than diesel fuel but lower than dieseline, and as the engine load increases, the combustion characteristics of FDF are close to diesel fuel; the soot, NOx and CO emissions of FDF are close to diesel fuel, however, the THC emissions are slightly higher than diesel fuel. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.