Renewable biofuels have been proposed for a long time as an alternative to the issues concerned to pollutants emission and also society s liability to fossil fuels. Biodiesel and ethanol are renewable commercial fuel candidates for fossil fuels substitution, especially, in compression ignition engines, which are typically more efficient than the spark ignition ones. Diesel s partial replacement, such as the substitution by ternary blends formed by diesel, biodiesel and ethanol, is a strategy applicable to compression ignition engines without the need of further modifications. In this dissertation tests were run in a multi-cylinder compression ignition engine (MWM 4.10 TCA), fueled with diesel, biodiesel (up to 15 percent in volumetric content) and anhydrous ethanol (up to 20 percent in volumetric content) blends. Each mixture should be composed by different alcohol s proportions and always containing a 1 percent volumetric concentration of additive in order to ensure ternary s blend stability. Therefore, tests try to ally diesel s partial replacement by biofuels with engine performance and blends combustion assessment, under some combinations of load, engine speed and injection timing conditions. The tests performed indicate that the start of the combustion experienced up to 4.7 degrees CA postponements, when fueled with a 20 percent ethanol volumetric concentration blend. Still, optimized injection timing investigation brought improvements to engine performance, allowed better ethanol energetic conversions through compression ignition when compared to spark ignition and could also minimize delays caused by ethanol s presence in the beginning of the combustion.