A model was developed to describe the elutriation of fines from a spouted bed of pulp fibers, which is a new method to separate fines from fibers. During spouting the pulp fibers are aggregated in fiber floes, which we model as coarse porous spheres. In general, we can distinguish three liquid regions inside and around a coarse particle in a shear flow: bulk liquid, liquid passing through the sphere, and liquid circulating inside it. A system of three ordinary differential equations describing the balance of fines in these regions was solved numerically. A source term was included to account for the release of fines during the dynamic equilibrium between formation and break-up of fiber floes. Comparison between theory and experiment showed that a simplified two-region model, which contains two adjustable parameters, is adequate to describe the elutriation data.