Aluminum is a class of important metal material that has been widely used in many fields in industrial production. More and more aluminum compounds are discharged into water system along with the wastewater. Therefore, it is very necessary to determine the content of aluminum in water. The resonance Rayleigh scattering spectrum of aluminum aluminon cetyltrimethylammonium bromide system was investigated.The determination conditions were optimized. The interference of other ions in system was investigated. The reaction mechanism was preliminarily discussed. The determination method of aluminum by resonance Rayleigh scattering was finally established. The results indicated that aluminum could form complex anion with aluminon (aurin tricarboxylic acid, ATA) in weakly acid medium. Then the ion association complex was formed between complex anion and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTMAB) via electrostatic attraction and hydrophobic interaction, leading to the increase of resonance Rayleigh scattering intensity of system. The mass concentration of Al in range of 0.02 0.16 μg/mL showed good linearity to the corresponding resonance Rayleigh scattering intensity at 598.1 nm with correlation coefficient of 0.998 9.The detection limit was 1.8 ng/mL. The proposed method was applied for the analysis of actual water sample. The relative standard deviation (RSD, n=6) was not more than 1.1%. The recoveries were between 93.5% and 100.8%. The determination results were consistent with those obtained by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS).