Application Of Gauss-Jordan Elimination

Method In Balancing Typical Chemical Equations

INTRODUCTION
BALANCING equations in chemical reactions is very basic and fundamental
concept and in some cases it becomes more difficult so that a mathematical
treatment is needed in order to make it easy. A large number of research articles
have been written on this topic for last two decades. It draws much attention of
chemists who feel very difficult in the case of balancing typical chemical reaction
equations. An innovative mathematical treatment can make this typical work as
very simple. There have been a large number of researchers studying balancing
the chemical reaction equations using principles in Linear Algebra for last
hundred years.

An empirical formula for a chemical reaction is an equation containing the

minimal integer multiples of the reactants and products so that the number of
atoms of each element agrees on both sides. Finding the empirical formula is
called balancing the equation. Chemical reactions can be described by equations.
The expressions on the left side are called the reactants, and those on the right
side are the products, which are produced from the reaction of chemicals on the
left. Unlike mathematical equations, the two sides are separated by an arrow,
either ⟶, which indicates that the reactants form the products, or ⟷, which
indicates a reversible equation: that is, once the products are formed, they begin
to fom reactants. A chemical equation is balanced, provided that the number of
atoms of each type on the left is the same as the number of atom; of the
corresponding type on the right.
 FORMING HOMOGENOUS LINEAR EQUATIONS
In this section principles in Linear Algebra (Matrix Algebra) are applied for
balancing chemical reaction equations. The following chemical equations
balancing techniques are so innovative that they will be more useful in balancing
very difficult chemical reaction equations. There are a number of balancing
techniques provided so far by researchers but the following method is completely
differs from the previous methods.

Prerequisites:

1) Every chemical reaction can be represented by the matrix equation AX=O

where A is called a reaction matrix and X is a column matrix of coefficients Xi and
O is a null column matrix.

2) If the matrix equation AX=0 has only trivial solution then corresponding
chemical reaction is called infeasible reaction.

3) If the matrix equation AX=0 has non trivial solution then corresponding
chemical reaction is called feasible reaction.

Problem :-

K4Fe(CN)6 + KmnO4 + H2SO4 = KHSO4 + Fe2(SO4)3 + MnSO4 + HNO3 + CO2 +

H2O

It is unbalanced chemical equation where there are eight compounds and

elements : K-Potassium, Fe-Iron, C-Carbon, N-Nitrogen, Mn-Manganese, O-
Oxygen, H-Hydrogen, S-Sulphur .

Introducing unknowns yi(i=1,2…9) in order to balance the above chemical

equation:

y1 K4Fe(CN)6 + y2 KmnO4 + y3 H2SO4 = y4 KHSO4 + y5 Fe2(SO4)3 + y6 MnSO4 +

y7 HNO3 + y8 CO2 + y9 H2O

Corresponding to eight elements one can get eight simultaneous linear equations
as below :
K : 4y1 + y2 =y4

Fe: y1 = 2y5

C: 6y1 = y8

N: 6y1 = y7

Mn: y2 = y6

O: 4y2 + 4y3 = 4y4 + 12y5 + 4y6 + 3y7 + 2y8 + y9

H: 2y3 = y4 + y7 + 2y9

S: y3 = y4 + 3y5 + y6

In the above equations subscript represents the total number of atoms of an

element. Rewriting these equations as a homogenous linear system in nine
unknowns,

This system can be solved by Gauss-Jordan elimination method. Consider the

matrix equation AX=O
where A is called reaction matrix. The augmented matrix is given by :

Solving Augmented Matrix using Gauss-Jordan Elimination method By applying

row transformations one can get the echelon form as below :
Number of unknowns (n)=9yi(i=1,2,..9)

Rank= number of non-zero rows=8

AX=O is a homogeneous linear system of equations and can have nontrivial

solution as n>r i.e number of unknowns < rank.

Number of independent solutions is n–r=9-8=1

One can treat any one of yi(i=1,2,..9) as independent.

Let y9 be independent.

Then y1 , y2 ,...y8 are dependent variables.

If n=r, then the system AX=O possess just trivial solution i.e zero solution only.

For the system AX=O:

For instance if one can choose:

Since we have got a non-zero solution (non-trivial solution) the above chemical
reaction equation in problem , therefore it is called feasible reaction equation.
Now the given chemical equation becomes

CONCLUSION
This study investigate every chemical reaction is represented by homogenous
systems of linear equation only. Since homogeneous systems are always
consistent (that is, it must have at least one solution), the chemical reaction is
feasible if the homogeneous systems has many infinitely solutions. Thus, Gauss-
Jordan elimination method is applicable for all possible cases in balancing
chemical equations even for lower achieving students for success and it allows to
become very fast and very accurate even with relatively difficult equations. Even
if inspection is the usual method of balancing chemical equations, most chemistry
students are confusing to use for an equation with many terms and the final
result must be double checked to prove that the chemical equation is indeed
balanced. Hence, the Gauss-Jordan method is systematic, can be applied to
difficult reactions and can be easily used with equation solvers. In the context of
future research one can extend these ideas to develop a more general method
which helps in deterring whether a complicated chemical reaction equations
having any arbitrary number of compounds and elements is feasible or not.