alkanes are often described as saturated hydrocarbons-hydrocarbons because they contain only carbon and hydrogen; saturated because they have only C-C and C-H single bonds and thus contain the maximum possible number of hydrogens per carbon. they have the general formula CnH2n+2, where n is an integer. Alkanes are also occasionally referred to as aliphatic compounds, a name derived from the Greek aleiphas, meaning "fat." We'll see in Section 27.1 that many animal fats contain long carbon chains similar to alkanes.