In this paper, a porous metal-organic framework, aluminium trimesate (Al-MIL-96) was synthesized using the microwave irradiation method in 30 min. The adsorption properties of Al-MIL-96 for sulfurated and nitrogenous VOCs were investigated. The as-prepared products were characterized using XRD, SEM, BET, TG-DTA and FT-IR. The analysis results indicated that Al-MIL-96 is a pure phase and has an octadecahedral morphology with size 1 pin and has a hydrothermal stability at 3700 degrees C. The adsorption results showed that the nitrogen atom of the pyridine molecule was selectively adsorbed on the Lewis acid sites of Al-MIL-96. Adsorption isotherms and kinetics matched well with Langmuir model and pseudo-second-order model, respectively. All of the thermodynamics parameters were in favour of adsorption. Finally, Al-MIL-96 could be reused by washing with dilute acid solution. An adsorption mechanism was proposed based on the structural features of Al-MIL-96 and FT-IR results. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.