After the break-up of Standard Oil Trust, Van Dyke led the debt-ridden Atlantic Refining Company into expanded markets and sales of more than $131 million.
In 1867, at the age of 17, young Van Dyke ran away from home to find a job in the western Pennsylvania oil fields.
In 1879, Standard Oil purchased the Sone & Fleming Refinery in Brooklyn, New York and Van Dyke was made plant manager.
Charged with finding a way to remove the sulfur from Ohio’s crude oil, John D. Rockefeller teamed Van Dyke with German chemist, Herman Frasch.
Frasch successfully devised the necessary chemistry while Van Dyke invented a hollow water-cooled drive shaft for the furnace employed in the recovery of the copper oxide that was necessary to remove the sulfur from the crude oil.
This technique was considered the industry's first complete distillation process, saving millions of dollars annually in refining costs.
[6] In response to the V-car's poor acceptance, UTL asked John Van Dyke to design a tank car along more conventional lines.
[8][9] When the Sherman Antitrust Act broke up Standard Oil Trust in 1911, John Van Dyke became president of the Atlantic Refining Company.
Prior to the Great Depression, a boom period occurred and Van Dyke took an unpopular stance in restraining Atlantic's growth.