A compact dedust scheme coupling a cyclone with a built-in circulating granular bed filter (C-CGBF) for continuous hot gas cleanup is introduced. The effects of the operation parameters including the inlet dust concentrations, the inlet gas flow rates and the granules circulation fluxes on the separation performance of the C-CGBF are experimentally investigated using the FCC catalyst particles in a cold model setup. Experimental results reveal that stable/high collection efficiency, generally higher than 98%, is achieved. A real-time monitoring method is developed for timely reflecting the instantaneous variation of the granules circulation flux, in which way a notable critical flux is observed as the transition from the fixed bed into the moving bed regime. The individual separation contributions of the cyclone and the built-in granular bed are both estimated. The particles collected by them are also analyzed respectively for comparing their size distributions.