ZSM-22 zeolite was prepared by hydrothermal synthesis and its catalytic performance and deactivation behavior in methanol to olefin (MTO) were explored. The results suggest that low temperature is unfavorable to the activation of methanol, whereas the methanol conversion can be significantly increased with the increase of reaction temperature. Meanwhile, the elevation of reaction temperature can enhance the contribution of alkene cycle, leading to the improvement of the selectivity of propene and butene, while it has less influence on the formation of ethene. However, methanol largely cracks into methane at excessively high temperature. It can be found that there is an obviously fold line relationship between methanol conversion and the amount of coke, illustrating that ZSM-22 has different deactivation behavior with the time on steam. The results verify that the deactivation of ZSM-22 is mainly resulted from the pore blocking at initial period, while the coke species dominantly generate on the external surface of zeolite with the increase of reaction time.