This study is focused on understanding the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) kinetics of pyrolysates from lignin such as phenol, guaiacol and syringol over H-ZSM-5 catalyst. The major products from syringol were guaiacol, phenol, anisole, cresol, benzene, and toluene. A reaction network was proposed to capture the transformations of syringol in which the transformations of guaiacol and phenol were included. A kinetic model comprising nine reactions of seven species was developed. The simulated yields of a majority of the HDO products matched well with experiments in the temperature range of 350-500 °C, substantiating that the obtained rate parameters reasonably represent the HDO kinetics. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.