Acetylene (C2H2) is an important fuel for fuel cells, welding, and metal cutting. In this paper, a defected MIL-53 is reported for C2H2 storage. The defects were simply generated by ball milling MIL-53. Furthermore, it was found that the adsorption of C2H2 on the defected MIL-53 is stronger than that on MIL-53 without defection, reflected by adsorption heat increase from 19.3 to 25.5kJ/mol. As a result, the specific reversible C2H2 capacity per surface area increased with increasing defects. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.