In determining the rusticle
mass on the bow section, a comprehensive analysis of the movement
of iron as a result of biological activity and growth of rusticle's
was undertaken in a laboratory setting. One component of the
life cycle of the rusticle's became obvious when culturing the
rusticle's in the laboratory generated a red dust (RD) and yellow
biocolloidal clouds (YBC) during their growth cycle. These were
found to have gravimetric iron contents of 20+5% for the RD
and 8+3% for the YBC. It was determined that the iron was moving
from the steel into the rusticle's, where the common iron content
was 30+6%. The extraction process therefore causes the iron
to be excreted from the rusticle's as RD and YBC, and dispersed
into the oceanic environment. There are a number of dynamic
factors in this movement of iron from the steel to the oceanic
environment. These may be summarized in the following equations:
The movement of iron from the steel into the
rusticle's may be expressed by the amount of iron accumulated
(FeR) in the rusticle. This is reflected as a part of the calculated
rusticle biomass (Rm) determined by calculated mass volume corrected
by the rusticle density (Rd), based upon the mean iron concentration
(Fec) determined by analysis. Equation One calculates the total
iron retained in the rusticle's at any given time.
Equation One
FeR = (Rm * Rd) * Fec
While the iron concentrated in the rusticle's
(FeR) is calculated for a specific observation event, it does
not represent the total amount of iron removed from the steel
over the period of time that preceded this event. A daily
release of iron from the rusticle's can be calculated based
upon the factorial daily rates of releases of RD and YBC.
The daily releases of iron (Fedr) may be calculated using
Equation Two.
Equation Two
Fedr = (FeR * RRD) +
(FeR * RYBC)
The daily rates of iron removal are based
on the factorial releases of iron in the RD (RRD) and YBC
(RYBC). These two factors are calculated from the daily release
of biomass of RD (RDBM) and YBC (YBCBM) and the mean factorial
concentration of iron in the RD (RDFE) and YBC (YBCFE). These
are calculated in Equations Three and Four respectively.
Equation Three
RRD = RDBM * RDFE
Equation Four
RYBC = (YBCBM * YBCFE)
Clearly, the key component in the determination
of the movement of iron out of the steel is the rate at which
the rusticle's are growing over the steel structures on the
ship. There is now a chronological video record of the RMS
Titanic wreck site from 1986, 1987, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996
and 1998. This allows a sufficient base line of information
to calculate the rate of rusticle growth on the bow of the
ship.
Theoretically, the movement of the iron from the steel structures
of the RMS Titanic may be expected to move out into the oceanic
environment in a logical manner. The iron would originate
from the steel (FeS) and eventually become dispersed throughout
the biosphere (FeBS) with some of the iron terminating in
oxidized iron deposits (OFeD). The critical event is the differentiation
of the iron that enters the global biosphere (FeBS) becoming
entrapped locally at the wreck site, or at some other location,
as oxidized iron (OFeD) deposits, such as pig iron deposits.
This is depicted in Equation Five.
Equation Five
FeS ? FeR ? RDFE + YBCFE
? FeBS + OFeD
In the laboratory culture of rusticle's, a common occurrence
was the massive ejection of red dust into the water. Entrapment
of the red dust occurred using a 0.45-micron membrane filter.
Weight determination showed that, for the
two rusticle tanks studied, there was a per diem release of
red dust at a rate of between 0.018, indicating 0.02% of the
total mass of the rusticle's This would mean that over any
one year, given a steady release of red dust, the total mass
released in this form would be equivalent to 7% of the biomass
of rusticle's infesting the ship. It can be extrapolated that,
in addition to the mass of rusticle's infesting the ship and
extracting iron, there has been a substantial loss of iron
to the oceanic environment. In addition to the 242 tons of
iron accumulated by the rusticle's on the bow section by 1998,
it can be expected that a similar amount has, historically,
been removed from the steel and exported to the oceanic environment
by the rusticle's This is a critical component planned for
future studies.
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