Construction, petro-collecting/dispersing capacities, antimicrobial activity, and molecular docking study of new cationic surfactant-sulfonamide conjugates.

Surfactants with their diverse activities have been recently involved in controlling the spread of new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as they are capable of disrupting the membrane surrounding the virus. Using hybrids approach, we constructed a novel series of cationic surfactant-sulfonamide conjugates () through quaternization of the as-prepared sulfonamide derivatives () with -hexadecyl iodide followed by structural characterization by spectroscopy (IR and NMR). Being collective properties required in petroleum-processing environment, the petro-collecting/dispersing capacities on the surface of waters with different degrees of mineralization, and the antimicrobial performance against microbes and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) that mitigate microbiological corrosion were investigated for the synthesized conjugates. Among these conjugates, (2.5% aq. solution) exhibited the strongest ability to disperse the thin petroleum film on the seawater surface, whereas K is 95.33% after 96 h. In diluted form, collected the petroleum layer on distilled water surface (K = 32.01) for duration exceeds 4 days. Additionally, almost all compounds revealed high potency and comparable action with standard antimicrobials, especially and , which emphasize their role as potential biocides. Regarding biocidal activity against SRB, causes a significant reduction in the bacterial count from 2.8 × 10 cells/mL to Nil. Moreover, the conducted molecular docking study confirms the strong correlation between RNA polymerase binding with bioactivity against microbes over other studied proteins (threonine synthase and cyclooxygenase-2).