The deactivation of solid acid catalysts in liquid-phase alkylation of isobutane with butenes was investigated. The role of pore mouth plugging, in particular, was studied and it was found that it had a significant effect on the deactivation behavior. Simple explicit correlations were developed for catalyst lifetime in a CSTR, both in terms of time-on-stream and butene turnover per catalyst weight. The correlations were tested using available experimental data from the literature and a reasonable agreement was observed. It was shown that for a zeolitic catalyst the butene turnover per catalyst weight was proportional to the square root of catalyst loading, while it was inversely proportional to both the olefin feed concentration and the square root of feed flow rate.