Pivotal condensation and chemical balancing

arXiv2305.13313MaRDI QIDQ6437541FDOQ6437541

Authors: Hans-Christian Herbig 

Publication date: 6 April 2023

Abstract: I present a universal method, called pivotal condensation, for calculating stoichiometric factors of chemical reactions. It can be done by hand, even for rather complicated reactions. The main trick, which I call kernel pivotal condensation (ker pc), to calculate the kernel of a matrix might be of independent interest. The discussion is elaborated for matrices with entries in a principal ideal domain $R$. The ker pc calculates a basis with coefficients in $R$ for the kernel of a matrix, seen as e $Q$-vector space, where $Q$ is the quotient field of $R$. If $W$ is a free saturated $R$-submodule of $R^n$ I address the question how to modify an $R$-basis of the $Q$-vector subspace $Qotime{s}_{R}W$ over the quotient field $Q$ to obtain a basis of the $R$-module $W$. I also indicate how one can solve inhomogeneous linear systems, invert matrices and determine the four subspaces using pivotal condensation. I formulate the balancing by inspection method that is widely used to reduce the size of a linear system arising in chemical balancing in mathematical language.

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Linear equations (linear algebraic aspects) (15A06) Chemically reacting flows (80A32) Linear Diophantine equations (11D04)

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