We re-analyse a combined 198 ks Chandra observation of NGC4696, the brightest
galaxy of the Centaurus cluster. We extract temperature and metallicity
profiles from the data, and we confirm the presence of a sharp drop in iron
abundance, from ~1.8 Zsolar to ~0.4 Zsolar, within the central 5 kpc of the
cluster. We estimate that this abundance drop corresponds to a total "missing"
iron mass of 1.4e06 Msolar. We propose that part of this missing iron is locked
up in cool (~19 K) far-IR emitting dust, as found by Spitzer and Herschel
observations. This can occur if the iron injected by stellar mass loss in the
central region is in grains, which remain in that form as the injected dusty
cold gas mixes and joins the cold dusty filamentary nebula observed within the
same region. The bubbling feedback process observed in the cluster core then
drags filaments outward and dumps them at 10-20 kpc radius, where the
metallicity is high.Comment: 8 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA