The catalytic activity of cation exchange resins will be continuously reduced with its use time in a condensation reaction for bisphenol A (BPA). For online estimation of the catalytic activity, a catalytic deactivation model is studied for a production plant of BPA, state equation and observation equation are proposed based on the axial temperature distribution of the reactor and the acetone concentration at reactor entrance. A hybrid model of state equation is constructed for improving estimation precision. The unknown parameters in observation equation are calculated with sample data. The unscented Kalman filtering algorithm is then used for on-line estimation of the catalytic activity. The simulation results show that this hybrid model has higher estimation accuracy than the mechanism model and the model is effective for production process of BPA. (C) 2015 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.