A novel global harmony search algorithm for chemical equation balancing

Chemical equation balancing is an important issue in the field of chemistry, and it has drawn many researchers´ attention over the last few decades. Essentially, chemical equation balancing can be classified as integer programming problem with equality constraints. In this paper, we use a recently proposed algorithm - the novel global harmony search algorithm (NGHS) to solve this problem. The NGHS algorithm is an improved version of harmony search algorithm (HS), and it includes two important operations: position updating and genetic mutation with a low probability. The former can enhance the convergence of the NGHS, and the latter can effectively prevent the NGHS from trapping into the local optimum. Based on a large number of experiments, the NGHS has demonstrated high efficiency on solving chemical equation balancing. The results show that the NGHS can be an efficient alternative for solving chemical equation balancing.