Abstract
Energy consumption gains more relevance nowadays as many industries are in the pursuit of making their processes more efficient. Mineral processing is an essential stage to obtain valuable metals, which are required for the industrial and technological advance. The mineral liberation that occurs in the comminution plays an important role in mineral processing, since most of the energy consumed is required for this step. However, the study of grain boundary liberation through an intergranular fracture, is not being as analyzed as it should be; deeper and more accurate upgrades are required, in order to get a fully understanding in how to obtain grain boundary liberation, over random liberation (transgranular fracture). The intergranular fracture is the kind of breakage that provides more liberation with less energy required. Some studies have tried to give a perspective about how to measure and identify this type of fracture, in order to promote it and enhance the mineral liberation process. Among them, a couple of quantitative analysis using X-ray microtomography, conservation of the grain shape, Weibull statistics and SEM-based automated mineralogy, these techniques have contributed to understand which the factors influencing the breakage are, with the aim to acknowledge the relationship that they have with the grain boundary fracture, such as energy dissipation rate, texture of the ore, phase specific surface area, strength and size of particle. The main intention of this review is to gather the information of the latest research approaches, which their studies promote a comprehensive understanding of the grain boundary liberation, in the name to answer the question: Do the available techniques allow the engineers to design a comminution process, where the intergranular fracture is the aim?