Balance incomplete combustion of octane

Question

I am having a lot of trouble balancing it. I dont have a problem balancing the complete combustion.. just incomplete.

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Balancing is exact and incomplete isn't, it all depends.  Gasoline is essentially octane but it's well known that the completness of it's combustion in an engine is subject to many varriables.  Suffice it to say that is almost all of it is converted to CO2 in the engine and whatever CO is produced is oxidized to CO2 in the catalytic converer.

Answer 2

there'll be some CO instead of CO2.

Answer 3

The incomplete combustion should also produce some carbon monoxide, CO so you have

C8H18 +  11 O2 -----> 3 CO +  5 CO2 +  9 H2O

This seems to work.

Just balance the H atoms first then balance the Carbon atoms

There are 8 on the left side so you play around with the possibilities on the right side to equal 8. I started with 4CO and 4CO2 but that didn't work then I used 3 and 5 as is above and it worked. It's all just trial and error.