Study of urease inhibitory activity by medicinal plants extract based on new catalyst for Berthelot reaction and Taguchi experimental design

Abstract

The Berthelot reaction is a well-established colorimetric method for determination of ammonia. In this work, the effects of different bivalent ions (Ba2+, Cd2+, Co2+, Cu2+, Fe2+, Hg2+, Mg2+, Mn2+, Ni2+, and Pb2+) were studied as catalyst on the Berthelot reaction efficiency. CuCl2 was generally found as the best catalyst that provides a rapid and stable blue indophenol color. The Taguchi experimental design methodology has been applied to find optimum conditions. Four factors including temperature, pH, reaction time, and CuCl2 concentration at five levels were considered to achieve optimum conditions. Blue indophenol color stability for 40 min, and linearity response up to 20 mM of ammonium sulfate were achieved by further validation experiments. Limit of detection and quantification for this approach was 0.15 and 0.5 mM, respectively. Inhibitory activity of three traditional medicinal plants extract (Citrus aurantifolia, Laurus nobilis, and Zingiber officinale) was evaluated against jack bean urease activity by Berthelot reaction in the presence of CuCl2 as catalyst, and results were compared with traditional Berthelot reaction.