Jimenez purified water with prickly pear cactus. She chose prickly pear, she said, because it’s most common. She was able to successfully remove heavy metals from 1,000 milliliter water samples tainted with mercury, lead nitrate and silver nitrate with two pods of cactus.

The result: Purified water separated from the contaminants, which deposited to the bottom of the sample. Through more experiments, Jimenez determined that the more cactus used, the more effective the purification.

“In Mexico, they would dump their cactus water into drinking water,” she said. “It helps filter out sediments as well.”

Jimenez, who’s also gifted in art and photography, plans to attend Flagler University in St. Augustine, Fla.

Other CCHS students, although not advancing to state, came home with honors from the regional competition.

• Alan Parten, 17, senior, was distinguished with a U.S. Army Award for Outstanding Project and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Award for his fluidized bed furnace, a disposal method for organic matter including plastics. Air is blown through the furnace past limerocks an inch in diameter that move around like a fluid, Parten said.

After material and accelerant is ignited, air flow makes all of the material oxidize and burn completely.

“Once the rocks get hot, you don’t have to add any more fire, you don’t have to add any more accelerant, you just keep the rocks hot and keep air blowing over them and as long as you’re adding in trash it will keep burning. All you have to do is keep an air supply to it,” he said. “...I thought it would be once of those projects that kind of flopped, but it actually worked out.”

Smoke dissipates as heat increases, and there’s no carbon dioxide release, he said. Half the heat goes to reheating the rocks, and the rest is dispersed into air, he said, so the furnace can be handled during incineration.

Parten, who likes to talk, said he’s thinking about earning a college degree in business with the aim of becoming an entrepreneur.

• Arturo Arenas, 17, junior was distinguished with a U.S. Army Awards for Outstanding Project and U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Award for his gyroscopic-steered hover craft.

Typically, hover crafts are steered by a rudder system and a fan, but a rudder system depends too much on air flow, he said. If there’s no air, steering suffers, he said.

“With a gyroscope system, you don’t really need any air to steer it, so it’s much better with a gyroscope, and it’s much quicker turning with a gyroscope,” he said.

Arenas said he plans to add a propulsion system to his gyroscope system to better control steering.

• Jason Oxley, 18, senior, was distinguished with a U.S. Air Force Award for his experiments with air hockey air foil in relation to airplane wings. Oxley compared the lift and drag of foil punctured with micro blowing holes to a regular wing that blows out compressed air.