Simultaneous heat and mass transfer, during drying of moist capillary porous media, is modeled through different lumped-differential formulations, obtained from spatial integration of the original set of Luikov's equations for temperature and moisture potential. Besides the classical lumped system analysis, improved formulations are proposed, of same mathematicai simplicity, based on approximate evaluations of both temperature and moisture gradients within the medium. The relative merits of such improved zero-dimensional formulations are established, through critical comparisons against analytical solutions for the full partial diflerential system, over a wide range of the governing parameters.