I asked Kingsford about the smell and what was in thier product. Here's the reply.
Dear Mr. Gibson:
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about KINGSFORD Briquets. We appreciate your interest in our products.
The ingredients of this product are as follows:
Ingredient Function
wood char heat source
mineral char heat source
mineral carbon heat source
limestone uniform visual ashing
starch binder
borax press release
sodium nitrate ignition aid
sawdust ignition aid
Nobody knows when or where charcoal was invented, but traces of it have been discovered in archeological digs of Neanderthal sites, and cavemen used it to draw pictures of mastodons and other early animals. The modern charcoal briquet was invented by automaker Henry Ford. Ford operated a sawmill in the forests around Iron Mountain, Michigan, in the years prior to 1920 to make wooden parts for his Model T. As the piles of wood scraps began to grow, so did Ford's eagerness to find an efficient way of using them. He learned of a process developed and patented by an Orin F. Stafford. The process involved chipping wood into small pieces, converting it into charcoal, grinding the charcoal into powder, adding a binder and compressing the mix into the now-familiar, pillow-shaped briquet. By 1921, a charcoal-making plant was in full operation.
E. G. Kingsford, a lumberman who owned one of Ford's earliest automobile sales agencies and was distantly related, briefly served as manager of the briquet operation. A company town was built nearby and named Kingsford. In 1951, an investment group bought the plant, renamed the business the Kingsford Chemical Company, and took over operations. Its successor, The Kingsford Products Company, was acquired by The Clorox Company of Oakland, California, in 1973.
Today, KINGSFORD charcoal is manufactured from wood charcoal, anthracite coal, mineral charcoal, starch, sodium nitrate, limestone, sawdust, and August 23, 2000
Mr. Gibson
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borax. The wood and other high-carbon materials are heated in special ovens with little or no air. This process removes water, nitrogen and other elements, leaving almost pure carbon. The briquets do not contain petroleum or any petroleum by-products. KINGSFORD charcoal briquets with mesquite contain the same high-quality ingredients as KINGSFORD, but with the addition of real mesquite wood throughout.
/ Manufacturing briquets begins with preparing the wood charcoal using one of the following methods:
Retort processing -- Waste wood is processed through a large
furnace with multiple hearths (called a retort) in a
controlled-oxygen atmosphere. The wood is progressively
charred as it drops from one hearth to the next.
Kiln processing -- The waste wood is cut into slabs and stacked in
batches in a kiln that chars the wood in a
controlled-oxygen atmosphere.
Once the wood charcoal is prepared, it is crushed and combined with the other ingredients, formed into pillow-shaped briquets and dried. The advantage of using charcoal over wood is that charcoal burns hotter with less smoke.
If I can be of further assistance to you, please contact us again.
Sincerely,
Terry Dittus
Product Specialist
