A numerical simulation has been carried out in this work to evaluate the performance, combustion and emission characteristics of a compression ignition engine using different biodiesel-alcohol blends as fuels. A single cylinder, four stroke, naturally aspirated, direct injection diesel engine is chosen for the simulation work using the commercial software Diesel-RK. The effects of two alcohols, namely ethanol and methanol addition to palm stearin biodiesel have been separately investigated and compared. The predicted results show slightly higher brake specific fuel consumption as well as brake thermal efficiency with biodiesel-alcohol blends compared to neat biodiesel. An effective reduction of NOx emission is also observed with the biodiesel-alcohol blends. However, the instantaneous heat release rate, ignition delay, PM and smoke emission are found to be more with alcohol blended fuels. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.