Staging of separation operations to improve the overall efficiency of the process has always been practiced in mineral processing circuit design, be it cells in jigs, compartments in heavy media vessels or multiple cyclone installations. In fact, staging in circuit design occurs whenever a stream passes through a series of devices. However, the arrangement of the devices can affect the outcome across the spectrum of degradation, no improvement, improvement of the separation. Thus, it is critical to understand how the arrangement will affect the outcome. This paper presents a study of three general staging arrangements. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.