Kaolin is one of the most widely used additives to alleviate fouling and slagging problems, which often occurred on the boilers burning coal with high sodium content. In order to improve the adsorption capacity in this condition, the intercalation-exfoliation method in material field was applied to modify kaolin. Six representative intercalation agents were selected to prepare samples, including hydrazine, urea, potassium acetate, formamide, methylformamide and dimethyl sulfoxide. Experimental results showed that both of pore volume and pore diameter were expanded through modification, which is beneficial to adsorption in physical aspect. On the other hand, the reduction of mass loss rate (from 10.6% to 6.8%), i.e. the loss of hydroxyl groups during modification process was verified, which contributed to sodium-capturing through providing more available adsorption sites. There was little difference between raw kaolin and modified kaolin with regard to XRD patterns, suggesting that the main crystal structure of kaolin remained after modification. Sodium reacted with modified kaolinite to form nepheline during adsorption process, realizing its chemical fixation. It is concluded that intercalation-exfoliation method is capable of improving the sodium-capturing capacity of kaolin at high temperature. Kaolin intercalated with potassium acetate has the most significant sodium-capturing capacity, which increased from 77 mg/g to 100 mg/g, with the adsorption efficiency reaching 100%. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.