First off much appreciation for all of the info on this site. Glad this is the first time I've felt the need to create an account. Anywhoo mah hamster's been reading up on using Zinc powder to convert N-Oxide DMT to N-N and he had a few questions that he couldn't find explicit answers to. In the related page on the Nexus Wiki he seems to get the impression that any sort of acid or base would be fine to use, however his search engine of choice also pointed him to a thread on the Shroomery where the poster strongly warned against using lye and said to use Sodium Carbonate instead. He also saw a post here that seemed to indicate that some types of acid wouldn't work.

So he's wondering if there's any sort of dangerous interaction between lye and zinc as well as if his acid of choice would be fine to use. He's heard that MHRB can be .53% spice on the low end and that when using zinc the yields can go up to 2%. So during his next extraction he was planning on adding enough zinc for the conversion, assuming the worst case scenario of 1.5% of the total weight of the MHRB being N-Oxide, during the reduction of the bark tea and then basifying and pulling with naphtha as he normally would.

That reminds mah hamster of another question; in the zinc threads he's seen talk about using DCM or acetone to pull the spice but is this necessary if it's being converted into DMT and will be soluble anyways? He's just looking for the easiest way to integrate the zinc conversion into his initial procedure.

Check here... >2% no conversion necessary.

i do not believe he implied necessity.

i am not really scientifically literate to answer most of your questions, but i would check out calcium hydroxide (lime) if the causticity of lye is somehow a problem (i don't know why it would be, but best to err on the side of caution).
i would think most any type of acid would work.
if not, acetic is (i believe) confirmed to work.

DCM is not necessary, i do think acetone would even work as well as say naphtha or an aromatic.

Thanks, that kinda answers my hamster's questions. Like I said the Wiki page on this site referring to zinc reflux said acid of your choice/base of your choice and mentioned that the steps can be integrated into the initial alkaloid extraction. It seems to me that lye is the most common base for this so I figure it would be mentioned here if there was any danger to it.