The objective of the present work was to analyze the drying kinetics of silica gel based on an experimental study performed in a thin-layer dryer and a statistical discrimination of the main drying kinetic equations. Most semi-empirical drying kinetics equations presented in the literature are nonlinear; thus, care should be taken when estimating parameters, since in some situations the estimators may not be appropriate. There are procedures available to validate the statistical properties of the least squares estimators of nonlinear models. In this study, five semi-empirical drying kinetics equations were discriminated using measures of curvature and bias. The results showed that the Overhults equation is the best one to describe the drying kinetics of silica gel.