Ed. note: This story appears in the first issue of Georgia Tech Engineers, the new magazine from the College of Engineering. To request a copy, please email the editor at editor@coe.gatech.edu

TOHL Inc. was designed to address a specific problem: how to transport water when disasters leave an area’s infrastructure unusable. But three years later, it’s grown into a global company that aims to make clean water accessible to everyone.

The idea behind TOHL, which stands for Tubing Operations for Human Logistics, was conceived by Apoorv Sinha in 2010 when he was a chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) student at Georgia Tech. When earthquakes ravaged both Haiti and Chile just weeks apart, Sinha heard media reports of aid pouring in but getting stuck in ports due to destroyed supply chains. Thousands of bottles of water couldn’t be delivered to the people who needed them most because roads were impassable. Bothered by the situation, Sinha met with his adviser, ChBE Professor Matthew Realff, to discuss how to overcome the challenges of distribution in a devastated area.

The solution that came to Sinha involved coil tubing he had seen used in oil fields when he worked in Kuwait.

“In the oil field you have point A and point B and you can't build pillars or structures to support the tubing,” explains Sinha. “It has to be one piece that is that long. In disaster relief we saw the same parallel. We saw point A and point B—a place which has the materials you want and a place that needs them, and there's nothing in between to connect them because the roads are gone or the bridges are broken, or whatever other reason. We saw that parallel and thought if coil tubing can do this under high temperature, high pressure conditions in the oil field, it should be able to do the same in logistical bottlenecks as well.”

Realff suggested recruiting a civil engineering student to help develop the idea, so Sinha called on former calculus classmate and friend Ben Cohen. Together they developed a method to quickly install a pipeline of flexible tubing using a helicopter.

With an idea in place they recruited ChBE student Melissa McCoy, who had the experience needed to help develop a business plan. She in turn helped recruit Travis Horley, a public policy and international affairs major who had worked in South America and who suggested applying for funding through Startup Chile. It was sound advice, and late in 2011, Startup Chile awarded the group $40,000 in funding to get their concept off the ground.

With financing secured, TOHL went to Chile in March 2012, filed a patent, incorporated the company, and prepared to test its technology.

“What we actually filed a patent for,” explains Cohen, who is now TOHL’s president and CEO, “is the process of installing pipeline via helicopter in long segments via the methodology we use, which is a large spool attached to a cargo hook on a helicopter with one homogeneous piece of tubing rolled on the spool. The helicopter flies with the spool suspended from the hook and deploys the tubing as it flies along virtually any terrain, other than power lines.”

TOHL pitched the technology to various aid organizations prior to testing it, but the group was told either the technology wasn’t needed or that it wouldn’t work.

“It's kind of funny,” says Cohen. “We put together an animated video of how we expected the technology to work, and even when we showed people that video they didn't think it was going to work. They didn't think it would be possible to lay a pipeline with a helicopter because of the different forces at work. “

The skeptics were wrong: The initial test was a resounding success, installing a kilometer of 25-millimeter high-density polyethylene tubing via a spool suspended from a helicopter in just nine minutes. Eight hours later, the solar-powered pumps that power the system were up and running and water was flowing.

With the technology proven, Cohen sees tremendous opportunity for TOHL’s product. While the technology was developed for problems caused by natural disasters, Cohen and Sinha have realized that it also has applications in parts of the world where access to water is a daily problem even at the best of times.

So they’re working with local governments and water companies in countries including Chile, Peru, South Sudan and India, where their solution offers a fast and cost-effective alternative to installing miles and miles of traditional pipes. Looking beyond water distribution, TOHL is also exploring ways its technology could be used in the mining and marine salvage industries to transport fluids to and from work sites.

With TOHL poised to sign contracts with a range of new partners, the trio of engineers who launched the company credit Georgia Tech for putting them in a position to succeed.

“I think access to human capital was one of the key points,” says Sinha. “As much as you can get done by yourself, you definitely need a solid team to move forward. All of us who have been involved as team partners have been very crucial, and the only reason we were able to get them on board was because of Tech. Having an adviser like Dr. Raelff initially and then a team of myself, Ben, Melissa, and Travis, that's something that could only happen at Tech, where you have engineers with completely different backgrounds. The fact that Tech can pull students from different parts of the country, as well as the world—that was a huge benefit for us. That was definitely one of the reasons TOHL is growing globally, not just in Chile but in all different parts of the world.”

“I think at Georgia Tech I really found that if you wanted to take initiative and get something done that there was support here for you,” adds McCoy. “I think at some universities it's hard for students to get any traction or to get much help. I found that at Georgia Tech if you just asked people would sit down with you.”

An engineering education from Tech was invaluable according to Cohen.

“If I hadn't gone to Georgia Tech and received that training,” he says, “I know for a fact we wouldn't be as far along as we are now.” 

And where are they now? In the months since this story originally appeared in the  Georgia Tech Engineers magazine TOHL CEO Ben Cohen was awarded an Echoing Green Fellowship valued at $80,000, and a Katherine M. Swanson Young Innovator Award at Silicon Valley's Tech Awards worth $75,000 in funding. Melissa McCoy was named a Rhodes Scholar, and TOHL filmed a segment with Discovery's Animal Planet. The organization has also been featured on CNNMoney.com, and completed its first commercial installation in Chile, providing water to a village. There's so much interest in TOHL's system that they're curently unable to meet demand. Cohen envisions a day when TOHL has distribution points around the world, giving them quick access to disaster zones like Haiti and the Philippines where TOHL's innovative system could be put to use in a fraction of the time it would take to rebuild the traditional water-delivery infrastructure.