An eight-lump kinetic model contained 21 kinetic parameters was proposed to describe the secondary reaction process of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) gasoline. The model was solved by hybrid particle-swarm optimization (HPSO) which incorporated evolutionary strategies and the simulated annealing method into particle swarm optimization (PSO). A series of experiments were carried out in a riser reactor over an improved Y zeolite catalyst with different temperatures, catalyst to oil ratios and vapor residence times. The product distribution was obtained to estimate the 21 kinetic parameters of model; the calculated results obtained using the HPSO algorithm agreed well with the experimental results. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.