Hey Andy,
A quick barbecue 101
There's two types of BBQ.
1. Hot and fast grilling at searing temperatures, this is what a typical Brit will think of as a BBQ.
2. Low 'n' slow smoking, this is the style of BBQ that most here are really passionate about.
We all grill and we enjoy a grilled rib-eye as much as the next man but there's a passion for low 'n' slow amongst most of our members.
To give you an example of a low 'n' slow cook, we will take a large cut of meat, let's say a pork shoulder. this could be from 6lbs to 12 or 13lbs, a big chunk of meat
We'll cook marinade, season and prepare this meat then throw it on the smoker for 12+ hours, cooking at anywhere between 200F and 300F depending on the cook's tastes.
A lot of guys on here will have bullet smokers like the Weber Smokey Mountain and may choose to run a fire with a technique called the minion method where a small amount of lit charcoal is placed on a basket of unlit fuel. The fuel underneath lights as the fire burns onwards. The cookers are enclosed environments and the rate of burn is controlled by air intakes.
Some people do not like the minion method and will always use all lit charcoal and refuel. My problem with this technique is that you only need a tiny amount of fuel to hit your target temperature, if you light a full chimney of fuel and put it in your smoker then when you close up, the air flow is restricted below what is needed to support the burning fuel. This chokes the fire back and you will get a dirty burning fire until it settles down. This is fine for your first load before you put your meat on but it isn't good when you're refuelling.
I had a long discussion about fire control with a US fire investigator who is also into Q and it's about a bit more than the vent control a lot of people think it is.
What interests me in your product is that once lit and then controlled in a smoker it should burn for a long time as there's a lot of energy stored up in there because it's a solid mass of fuel without any rubbish in it. It would work with MM because it's always the binders you need to burn off during lighting and potentially it work well for a non minion burn using fewer briquettes.
I know from witnessing the output on pellet cookers that those little pellets whack out a lot of heat, so I predict briquettes of a similar structure (but charcoaled) could be awesome.
If it works you could have a fine product on your hands.