⚗️ Chemical Equation Balancer
Enter the carbon and hydrogen counts of a hydrocarbon fuel to see its balanced combustion equation coefficients (fuel + O2 -> CO2 + H2O).
What this balancer does
Balancing a chemical equation means finding whole-number coefficients so that the same number of each type of atom appears on both sides, in line with the law of conservation of mass. This tool focuses on the very common case of combustion: a hydrocarbon (or oxygenated hydrocarbon) fuel reacting with oxygen gas to form carbon dioxide and water.
The method
Given the fuel’s carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and any oxygen (O) atom counts per molecule, the calculator first balances carbon into CO2 and hydrogen into H2O, then solves for however much O2 is needed to supply the remaining oxygen atoms (accounting for any oxygen the fuel already contains), and finally reduces all four coefficients by their greatest common divisor to get the simplest whole-number ratio.
Note: This tool is built specifically for fuel + O2 -> CO2 + H2O combustion reactions; it is not a general-purpose balancer for arbitrary chemical equations. For general chemistry education.