The invention relates to production technology for cracking butyl octanol residual liquid into C4 and C8 by means of an alkaline liquid cracking agent. The technology is characterized by comprising the following steps of: preparing the alkaline liquid cracking agent, wherein the alkaline liquid cracking agent consists of sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, water, isopropanol, ethylene glycol, potassium permanganate, ethanol, barium nitrate and diboron trioxide; preheating the alkaline liquid cracking agent and the butyl octanol residual liquid through a preheater and adding into a distilling still, wherein the tower bottom temperature of the distilling still is between 200 and 280 DEG C, the tower top temperature is between 130 and 190 DEG C, and the tower top pressure is between 0.08 and 0.1Mpa below zero; and extracting the C4 and C8 generated by cracking from the tower top of the distilling still, pumping the C4 and C8 into a fractionating column at the downstream for fractionation, and extracting a small amount of uncracked heavy components from a tower bottom pump. The production technology has the advantages of high production capacity, high cracking selectivity, high content of the cracked useful components, low cost, simple process, and batch distillation or continuous distillation.