William Buttner | AIChE

William Buttner

Senior Scientist
Hydrogen Production, Power, and Storage Group, NREL

Dr. William Buttner is a senior scientist in the Hydrogen Production, Power, and Storage Group within the Energy Conversion and Storage Systems Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden CO, and has served as the Principal Investigator of the NREL Sensor Laboratory since 2008. In 2019 he became the lead for the Hydrogen Safety Research and Development (HSR&D) program, which is supported by the Safety, Codes, and Standards Subprogram for the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Office. The NREL Sensor Laboratory focuses on the safe implementation of alternative fuels for vehicle and infrastructure applications and new market development. One aim of the HSR&D program is to integrate hydrogen detection and other risk mitigation strategies for the development of safer hydrogen facilities. Dr. Buttner serves on a variety of code and standard development organizations that drive the safe and efficient utilization of hydrogen, including ASTM, NFPA, ISO and UL. He is also a member of the Center for Hydrogen Safety working group on hydrogen-natural gas blends and chairs the subgroup on detection. Dr. Buttner is also a co-chair on an ASTM Working Group looking at the impact of hydrogen natural gas admixtures on analytical methods developed by ASTM for natural gas process control and safety. Dr. Buttner has 35 years experience in chemical and physical sensor technology, field analytical chemistry, and electrochemical processes. Just prior to joining NREL, Dr. Buttner was at the Illinois Institute of Technology as a Research Professor in Chemistry and Director of the International Center for Sensor Science and Engineering. Dr. Buttner has over 50 publications in the area of chemical sensors and analytical methods for sensor and instrument-base on-site chemical analyses. With colleagues from the Joint Research Centre--JRC (Petten, Netherlands) and Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung—BAM (Berlin, Gernmany), Dr. Buttner co-authored the book Sensors for Safety and Process Control in Hydrogen Technologies Dr. Buttner received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Michigan State University.