The preparation of clay aerogel polymer composites was carried out following the methods presented in Refs. [32] and [33] with some minor modifications. Thus, the polymer (PVA) was first dissolved in 100 mL distilled water at 90 °C, and then allowed to cool to around room temperature. Afterwards, calculated amounts of MMT and SDS were added into the polymer solution. The mixture was stirred at room temperature for 8 h at 650 rpm using a magnetic stirrer. The resulted dispersion was then transferred to a laboratory blender, and sheared for 2 min. The sheared solution was poured into aluminum molds and frozen by submersion in liquid nitrogen. Subsequently, the molds were removed from the liquid nitrogen and placed into lyophilizer (Christ Alpha 2-4 LD plus) and freeze dried for 72 h. The dried aerogel composites were then removed from the molds and tested for sorption experiments.