Bug 192491

Summary: balancing a redox half-reaction
Product: [Applications] kalzium Reporter: Frederic MERAL <fr.meral>
Component: generalAssignee: Kalzium Developers <kalzium>
Status: REPORTED ---    
Severity: wishlist CC: aspotashev, mohitj8790
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Frederic MERAL 2009-05-12 22:51:47 UTC 
Version:           2.2.1 (using 4.2.2 (KDE 4.2.2), Mandriva Linux release 2009.1 (Cooker) for i586)
Compiler:          gcc
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.29.1-desktop-4mnb

It would be nice and useful if the Equation Solver could balance a redox half-reaction for a given redox couple, since oxydoreduction reactions are quite frequent in chemistry and in biology.

For example the equation : a MnO4[-] + b H[+] + c e[-] <-> d Mn[2+] + e H2O
shoud give the answer : 1 MnO4[-] + 8 H[+] + 5 e[-] <-> 1 Mn[2+] + 4 H2O

where e[-] represents an electron (or perhaps another symbol in the equation should be better to avoid confusion with the unknown coefficient e in the equation)
and <-> represents the equilibrium in aqueous solution.

Basicly, I think it is the same as the original solver but considering only the charge for the balance as regards electrons, which are only on one side of the half-equation (the side where there is the most positive charge, which is the one with the oxidizer)