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Solar desalination devices utilizing sustainable solar energy and the abundant resource of seawater has great potential as a response to global freshwater scarcity. Herein, a bilayered solar evaporator was designed and fabricated utilizing a facile paper sheet forming technology, which was composed of cellulose fibers decorated with Fe3O4 nanoparticles as the top absorbent layer and the original cellulose fibers as the bottom supporting substrate. The characterization of the cellulose fibers decorated with Fe3O4 nanoparticles revealed that the in situ formed Fe3O4 nanoparticles were successfully loaded on the fiber surface and presented a unique rough surface, endowing the absorber layer with highly efficient light absorption and photothermal conversion. Moreover, due to its superhydrophilic property, the cellulose fiber-based bottom substrate conferred ultra-speed water transport capability, which could enable an adequate water supply to combat the water loss caused by continuous evaporation on the top layer. With the advantages mentioned above, our designed bilayered paper-based evaporator achieved an evaporation rate ~1.22 kg m−2 h−1 within 10 min under 1 sun irradiation, which was much higher than that of original cellulose cardboard. Based on the simple and scalable manufacture process, the bilayered paper-based evaporator may have great potential as a highly efficient photothermal conversion material for real-world desalination applications.

Crude polyphenols were extracted from white currant fruit from the small berry resource garden in Northeast Agricultural University and purified by solid phase extraction (SPE) into polysaccharide, anthocyanin and non-anthocyanin fractions. The chemical composition as well as the contents of total phenols and total anthocyanins in each fraction was determined. 1,1-Diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging capacity and 2,2’-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) radical cation scavenging capacity, and ferric ion reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) were used to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of each fraction. The results showed that white currant fruit contained 78 non-anthocyanin polyphenols and only one anthocyanin polyphenol, corninin-3-glucoside, which can be used as a potential raw material for anthocyanin extraction. The contents of total phenols and total anthocyanins in the crude extract from white currant fruit were (34.93 ± 0.47) and (2.99 ± 0.98) mg/g, respectively. It had strong antioxidant capacity.