Final answer:
The correct coefficients needed to balance the chemical equation with C3H8OH are: 1 molecule of C3H8OH reacts with 5 molecules of O2 to produce 3 molecules of CO2 and 4 molecules of H2O. Therefore, the correct answer is option D.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the correct coefficients to balance the chemical equation, we need to make sure that the number of each type of atom on the reactant side is equal to the number of those atoms on the product side.
The original question is to fill in the correct coefficients for the given reaction: C3H8OH + CO2 + H2O. First, let's start by writing a general balanced equation: C3H8OH + O2 → x CO2 + y H2O where x and y are coefficients we will determine.
The C3H8OH molecule contains 3 carbon atoms, 8 hydrogen atoms, and 1 oxygen atom. The CO2 molecule contains 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms, and the H2O molecule contains 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. We can start by balancing the carbon atoms: we need 3 CO2 molecules to balance the 3 carbon atoms in C3H8OH, so x = 3.
Next, we balance the hydrogen atoms: there are 8 hydrogen atoms in C3H8OH, so we need 4 H2O molecules to balance the hydrogen atoms (since each H2O molecule has 2 hydrogen atoms), thus y = 4. Lastly, we need to balance the oxygen atoms. Since we have 3 CO2 (which totals 6 oxygen atoms) and 4 H2O (which adds 4 more oxygen atoms), the product side has 10 oxygen atoms in total. Therefore, we need 5 O2 molecules on the reactant side to balance the equation, considering that each O2 molecule contains 2 oxygen atoms.
The final balanced equation is: C3H8OH + 5O2 → 3CO2 + 4H2O. From the given options, the closest match and correct answer is D. C3H8OH + 5 CO + 7 H2O.