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The pharmaceutical industry has four basic operations to produce tablets: mixing, drying, milling, and tablet pressing. Fluidized bed drying of the pharmaceutical powders is one of the most efficient methods, which is finding ever-growing applications in diverse industries, especially in the pharmaceutical and the food industries. However, one of the problems that exist in the pharmaceutical industry is to determine when the formulation reaches the desired moisture content. This final value can be either determined with a Loss on Drying (LOD) technique on estimated using a model of the process. To obtain this model, it is necessary to know the parameters that control drying process as well as the characteristics of the granulation used in this stage. Unfortunately the modeling of drying is still uncertain. The objective of this research was to determine an empirical correlation for the mass transfer coefficient (kga) of pharmaceutical powders in a Fluid Bed Dryer (FBD) which will then be used a long with fundamental models to predict moisture content. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)