Balance chemical equations!

C, 442 505 chars

// element use table, then once parsed reused as molecule weights
u,t[99];

// molecules
char*s,*m[99]; // name and following separator
c,v[99][99]; // count-1, element vector

i,j,n;

// brute force solver, n==0 upon solution - assume at most 30 of each molecule
b(k){
    if(k<0)for(n=j=0;!n&&j<u;j++)for(i=0;i<=c;i++)n+=t[i]*v[i][j]; // check if sums to zero
    else for(t[k]=0;n&&t[k]++<30;)b(k-1); // loop through all combos of weights
}

main(int r,char**a){
    // parse
    for(s=m[0]=a[1];*s;){
        // parse separator, advance next molecule
        if(*s==45)r=0,s++;
        if(*s<65)m[++c]=++s;
        // parse element
        j=*s++;
        if(*s>96)j=*s+++j<<8;            
        // lookup element index
        for(i=0,t[u]=j;t[i]-j;i++);
        u+=i==u;
        // parse amount
        for(n=0;*s>>4==3;)n=n*10+*s++-48;
        n+=!n;
        // store element count in molecule vector, flip sign for other side of '->'
        v[c][i]=r?n:-n;
    }
    // solve
    b(c);
    // output
    for(i=0,s=n?"Nope!":a[1];*s;putchar(*s++))s==m[i]&&t[i++]>1?printf("%d",t[i-1]):0;
    putchar(10);
}

Run as:

./a.out "C7H16+O2->CO2+H2O"
./a.out "Al+Fe2O4->Fe+Al2O3"
./a.out "Pb->Au"

Results:

C7H16+11O2->7CO2+8H2O
8Al+3Fe2O4->6Fe+4Al2O3
Nope!

Mathematica 507

I employed the augmented chemical composition matrix approach described in

L.R.Thorne, An innovative approach to balancing chemical - reaction equations : a simplified matrix - inverse technique for determining the matrix null space. Chem.Educator, 2010, 15, 304 - 308.

One slight tweak was added: I divided the transpose of the null-space vector by the greatest common divisor of the elements to ensure integer values in any solutions. My implementation does not yet handle cases where there is more than one solution to balancing the equation.

b@t_ :=Quiet@Check[Module[{s = StringSplit[t, "+" | "->"], g = StringCases, k = Length, 
  e, v, f, z, r},
e = Union@Flatten[g[#, _?UpperCaseQ ~~ ___?LowerCaseQ] & /@ s];v = k@e;
s_~f~e_ := If[g[s, e] == {}, 0, If[(r = g[s, e ~~ p__?DigitQ :> p]) == {}, 1, 
   r /. {{x_} :> ToExpression@x}]];z = k@s - v;
r = #/(GCD @@ #) &[Inverse[Join[SparseArray[{{i_, j_} :> f[s[[j]], e[[i]]]}, k /@ {e, s}], 
Table[Join[ConstantArray[0, {z, v}][[i]], #[[i]]], {i, k[#]}]]][[All, -1]] &
   [IdentityMatrix@z]];
Row@Flatten[ReplacePart[Riffle[Partition[Riffle[Abs@r, s], 2], " + "], 
   2 Count[r, _?Negative] -> " -> "]]], "Nope!"]

Tests

b["C7H16+O2->CO2+H2O"]
b["Al+Fe2O3->Fe+Al2O3"]
b["Pb->Au"]

Analysis

It works by setting up the following chemical composition table, consisting of chemical species by elements, to which an addition nullity vector is added (becoming the augmented chemical composition table:

The inner cells are removed as a matrix and inverted, yielding.

The right-most column is extracted, yielding:

{-(1/8), -(11/8), 7/8, 1}

Each element in the vector is divided by the gcd of the elements (1/8), giving:

{-1, -11, 7, 8}

where the negative values will be placed on the left side of the arrow. The absolute values of these are the numbers needed to balance the original equation:

Python, 880 chars

import sys,re
from sympy.solvers import solve
from sympy import Symbol
from fractions import gcd
from collections import defaultdict

Ls=list('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')
eq=sys.argv[1]
Ss,Os,Es,a,i=defaultdict(list),Ls[:],[],1,1
for p in eq.split('->'):
 for k in p.split('+'):
  c = [Ls.pop(0), 1]
  for e,m in re.findall('([A-Z][a-z]?)([0-9]*)',k):
   m=1 if m=='' else int(m)
   a*=m
   d=[c[0],c[1]*m*i]
   Ss[e][:0],Es[:0]=[d],[[e,d]]
 i=-1
Ys=dict((s,eval('Symbol("'+s+'")')) for s in Os if s not in Ls)
Qs=[eval('+'.join('%d*%s'%(c[1],c[0]) for c in Ss[s]),{},Ys) for s in Ss]+[Ys['a']-a]
k=solve(Qs,*Ys)
if k:
 N=[k[Ys[s]] for s in sorted(Ys)]
 g=N[0]
 for a1, a2 in zip(N[0::2],N[1::2]):g=gcd(g,a2)
 N=[i/g for i in N]
 pM=lambda c: str(c) if c!=1 else ''
 print '->'.join('+'.join(pM(N.pop(0))+str(t) for t in p.split('+')) for p in eq.split('->'))
else:print 'Nope!'

Tests:

python chem-min.py "C7H16+O2->CO2+H2O"
python chem-min.py "Al+Fe2O4->Fe+Al2O3"
python chem-min.py "Pb->Au"

Output:

C7H16+11O2->7CO2+8H2O
8Al+3Fe2O4->6Fe+4Al2O3
Nope!

Could be much less than 880, but my eyes are killing me already...