Atmospheric Air contains approximately 21% oxygen (O2) by volume.

The
other 79% of "other gases" is mostly nitrogen (N 2), so we will assume air to be
composed of 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen by volume. Thus each mole of oxygen
needed to oxidize the hydrocarbon is accompanied by 79/21 = 3.76 moles of nitrogen.
Using this combination the molecular mass of air becomes 29 [kg/kmol]. Note that it
is assumed that the nitrogen will not normally undergo any chemical reaction.

The Combustion Process - The basic combustion process can be described

by the fuel (the hydrocarbon) plus oxydizer (air or oxygen) called the Reactants,
which undergo a chemical process while releasing heat to form the Products of
combustion such that mass is conserved. In the simplest combustion process, known
as Stoichiometric Combustion, all the carbon in the fuel forms carbon dioxide (CO 2)
and all the hydrogen forms water (H2O) in the products, thus we can write the
chemical reaction as follows: