Al-Fum (Aluminum Fumarate): The World's First Ton-Scale MOF, Now Manufactured in Indonesia

Most MOFs remain stuck at the laboratory scale, difficult to produce beyond a few grams at a time. Al-Fum is the exception. Known commercially as Basolite A520, it's one of the first MOFs BASF successfully manufactured at ton scale through a fully solvent-free, water-based synthesis, reaching a space-time yield of 3,600 kilograms per cubic meter per day, a breakthrough that even won the Pierre Potier Prize for sustainable chemistry innovation. Al-Fum (Aluminum Fumarate) is an aluminum-based MOF linked by fumaric acid, the simplest organic ligand among the popular MOFs, allowing it to be synthesized at low cost while still producing a framework with excellent chemical and hydrothermal stability.

Research labs in Indonesia have typically had to import MOFs with fully activated porosity, genuinely free of residual solvent. How much surface area is actually usable depends entirely on activation quality, not just how simple the ligand looks on paper. That's starting to change.

ITNANO (CV. Inovasi Teknologi Nano), based at the NRE Lab in Medan, is Indonesia's first private nanomaterials research startup manufacturing Al-Fum locally. Here's what Al-Fum actually is, why its activation quality matters, and where it's being used in research and industry today.

What Is Al-Fum?

Al-Fum is built from aluminum ions linked by fumaric acid, a short four-carbon dicarboxylic acid, far simpler than the tricarboxylate ligands like BTC used in Cu-BTC or MIL-96. That ligand simplicity is exactly what allows Al-Fum to be synthesized from cheap raw materials through an environmentally friendly process, while still producing a porous framework with excellent hydrothermal stability, able to withstand humid conditions that typically degrade many other MOFs.

Activation quality is the biggest factor in Al-Fum's performance, because the surface area that's genuinely accessible only appears once the solvent and water originally filling its pores are fully removed. The literature reports Al-Fum's surface area ranging anywhere from around 900 m²/g to over 1,200–1,300 m²/g depending on how completely it's activated, a fairly wide range for a material with exactly the same chemical structure. ITNANO's Al-Fum has a chemical formula of C₄H₃AlO₅, a molecular weight of 158.05 g/mol, and takes the form of a white powder.

Where Al-Fum Is Being Used

Gas adsorption and separation

Al-Fum's high hydrothermal stability makes it a strong candidate for membranes and adsorption systems separating gases like CO₂, methane (CH₄), and hydrogen (H₂), including CO₂/N₂ and CO₂/CH₄ separation relevant to industrial carbon capture, where resistance to the water vapor always present in flue gas is a critical factor.

Humidity control and water harvesting

Al-Fum is also being researched for humidity control and atmospheric water harvesting applications. In a test comparing an Al-Fum cartridge against a MOF-303 cartridge in the same water-harvesting device, Al-Fum was recorded delivering 0.55 liters of water per kilogram of MOF per day, close to MOF-303's total uptake capacity despite slower adsorption-desorption kinetics, a reminder that cycle speed matters just as much as total uptake capacity for this application.

Catalysis and catalyst support

The Lewis acid sites on aluminum within Al-Fum's framework also make it useful as a catalyst or catalyst support in various chemical processes, drawing on the combination of high porosity and chemical stability.

Energy storage and electrode composite materials

Al-Fum's high porosity and stability are also used in composite materials for energy storage systems and electrodes, serving as a supporting framework that increases the active material's surface area.

Water and air purification

Beyond the applications above, Al-Fum is also used for pollutant adsorption in water and air purification applications, drawing on its high surface area and good chemical stability under a range of environmental conditions.

Why Source Al-Fum Locally

Even though Al-Fum is famous for being cheap and stable, the surface area that's actually usable depends entirely on how completely it's activated, a process sensitive to storage conditions and long-distance shipping. A batch with incomplete activation still holds solvent inside its pores, reducing real adsorption capacity even though it remains chemically identical to a fully activated batch. ITNANO, established by the Titian Research Group's NRE Lab, manufactures Al-Fum domestically with consistent activation quality control on every batch, giving labs in Indonesia a MOF whose surface area can be relied on from the moment it arrives.

Whether you're developing gas separation, researching humidity control and water harvesting, formulating catalysts, or working on energy composite and water/air purification applications, Al-Fum gives you an activation quality and surface area that a distant supplier can't guarantee after shipping, without the import wait. See ITNANO's MOF product line for current specifications and pricing.

Get Research-Grade Al-Fum Today

Whether you're working on gas adsorption and separation, humidity control, catalysis, or energy composite and water/air purification research, ITNANO gives you direct access to locally manufactured, research-grade Al-Fum.

📦 View product specifications at itnano.store

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ITNANO is a product line by NRE Lab (CV. Inovasi Teknologi Nano), based in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, advancing local access to graphene, 2D materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and other advanced nanomaterials for research and industry.