As for any other physical separation process, liberation is pre-requisite for possible separation. Liberation characteristics are well known and relatively easy to study for particulate lots in smaller size ranges, e.g. flotation feed and products. The analysis is essential for understanding the possible results of physical separation and relatively easy to conduct in laboratory on a couple of dozens of grams of sample which can be studied using optical methods or such as the QEMSCAN. 
For larger particles above  it is widely known for applications that are treated using density separation methods, such as coal or iron ore. Here, the washability analysis can be conducted on sample masses up to 10 tonnes in equipped laboratories. For sensor-based sorting, where laboratory methods can only tell about the liberation characteristics where the describing feature is the density (e.g. iron ore, coal), hand counting, single-particle tests and bulk tests can reveal the liberation characteristics of a bulk material: Hereby, only single particle tests reveal the true liberation, while hand counting and bulk testing give a result which also incorporates the separation efficiency of the type of analysis. More information on the testing procedures used in technical feasibility evaluation can be found in the respective chapter.