"Peter Aitken" > wrote in message
>
> Except that charcoal is not made from coal - it's made from wood.
>
>
> --
> Peter Aitken

Wood is just one of many ingredients of charcoal briquetts. See this
information from Garry Howard and Kingsford.

I got this back in response to my request for information from Kingsford
about their charcoal. It looks like a form letter. It does confirm the use
of anthracite coal, mineral charcoal (whatever that is), sodium nitrate,
limestone, and borax. Plus it's made from "waste wood". Waste from what I
wonder. I think I'm going to stick with the lump charcoal. At least I know
it started out as a hunk of wood. It's also interesting that Kingsford is
now owned by Clorox.

Garry Howard - Cambridge, MA -
Garry's BBQ Pit - http://bbq.netrelief.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Mail, Clorox ]
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 1998 9:29 AM
To: ;
Subject: E-Mail Message


Dear Mr. Howard:

Thank you for asking about KINGSFORD charcoal briquets.

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, and 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
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.

I hope this information is helpful to you. Again, thank you for your
interest in The Kingsford Products Company.

Jessica D. Jago
Product Specialist