描述
Alkanes is a member of the class of compounds known as saturated hydrocarbons. Saturated hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons that contains only saturated carbon atoms, which are linked to one another through single bonds. These includes alkanes and cycloalkanes. Alkanes can be found in black elderberry, which makes alkanes a potential biomarker for the consumption of this food product. In organic chemistry, an alkane, or paraffin (a historical name that also has other meanings), is an acyclic saturated hydrocarbon. In other words, an alkane consists of hydrogen and carbon atoms arranged in a tree structure in which all the carbon-carbon bonds are single. Alkanes have the general chemical formula CnH2n+2. The alkanes range in complexity from the simplest case of methane, CH4 where n = 1 (sometimes called the parent molecule), to arbitrarily large molecules .