Lemon peel waste oil is a suitable candidate as a bio-jet fuel. In this study the combustion kinetics of lemon peel oil (LPO) blended with conventional jet fuel (Jet-A) has been modelled using n-butyl cyclohexane and n-dodecane as a two-component surrogate. This is the first attempt towards developing a surrogate fuel system for Jet-A and LPO blend. The ignition delay times and laminar flame speeds have been compared for the two fuel molecules and their blends. The model predicts that LPO is potentially a good eco-friendly substitute for jet-A fuel and blends containing up to 30 % LPO would be a promising alternative. Then, the detailed kinetic mechanism has been reduced and the performance of the reduced mechanism has been studied. This reduced mechanism is suited for complex computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to study actual gas turbine combustion characteristics. A well validated reduced chemical kinetic model containing 78 species and 511 reactions developed from the detailed JetSurF 2.0 mechanism that can satisfactorily simulate the flame speed and ignition delay of LPO-Jet-A fuel blends is the outcome of the research. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.