Study On Analysis Of The Chemical Components In Mentha Arvensis

Mint is the Mentha arvensis's dry part on the ground. Mint has a lot of use in industries such as medicine, food, cosmetics, spices and cigarette etc. As Chinese medicine, it tastes spice and the character is cool, so that mint can be used to cure many diseases. For example: cold, fever, headache, red eye, numb throat, throat gall, tongue wound, toothache, hives and measles. In this paper, the chemical component of mint has been analyzed.The determination of free amino acids in Mentha arvensis of different part by the automatic analyzer is presented in this article. The result shows that there are 16 kinds of amino acids in Mentha arvensis. There contents in the different part of leaf,stem and Mentha arvensis are 9.805%,3.995% and 7.005%, respectively. And there are 6 kinds of human essential amino acids in Mentha arvensis.The determination of trace elements in Mentha arvensis including its leave, stem and the whole by using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomatic Emission Spectrometry was presented in this articl. The sample was made in dry-ashing and wave methods. The dertermination results indicate that: Mentha arvensis contains many trace elements such as Al, Fe, Na, Zn etc. Among them Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Zn, Sr are necessary for the health of human beings. Comparison was made between the two treatment methods, and dry-ashing method may lose as a whole or as a part for volatilizing. Certain elements are volatile when existing in chloride as a large amount. Some elements without volatilzation may lose, especially in the case of little ash, It is hard to fuse by burning when dealt by acid. Elements lose less in wave method, and result is more exact. So ICP-AES method was characterized with simple, fast and high accuracy for the determination of trace elements in Mentha arvensis.The easily volatilized fine component in the mint has been analyzed with the capillary GC-MS chromatography, and totally there are 35 components. Each component has been identified with the standard MS database in the computer, and the compound content also was calculated with its peak area.The contents of activity components in the mint, menthol and menthone, have been analyzed with GC chromatography. The former is about 60% and the latter is about 10%. There are some other ways to analyzed the contents of menthol and menthone, such as polarimetry, refraction index method and acetylation method. While these methods have complex operation, a lot of reagent, long time and caustic conditions. So GC chromatography was used to analyze the methanol and methanone content in the mint.