1. Introduction Processing weathered apatitic phosphate ores includes separating the slimes’ fraction to increase the selectivity in the downstream flotation concentration process [1,2,3,4]. Although beneficial to the concentration, this condition also results in significant losses of phosphorus-bearing minerals to the slimes. This combination results in the need to control each stage of an industrial desliming circuit to balance the benefits and losses of hydroxyapatite (HA) from the process.
