The heating of particles by plasma radiation plays a critical role in space science involving dusty plasma and in industrial processes such as plasma vapor deposition, microchip production, etching and plasma fusion. Numerical modeling of radiation heat transfer from gas or plasma to micro- and nano-scale particles including exchange of scattered thermal radiation between particles is a promising way to determine their temperature and possible phase change. Modeling of gas and plasma loaded with nanoparticles is different from a typical multiphase flow in which particles are in thermal equilibrium with surrounding gas. On the contrary, the temperature of particles heated by radiation from plasma significantly exceeds the local gas temperature. The nanoparticles’ temperature dependence is quite different from conventional surface heating of macro-scale particles. The proposed research is focused on numerical modeling of scattering of thermal radiation by particles in Rayleigh regime in which the radius of particle is order of magnitude smaller compared to the radiation wavelength. In the considered Rayleigh regime, larger particles are heated to higher temperatures than smaller particles - this is because electromagnetic energy absorption is volume-dependent while cooling (dominated by thermal conduction and convection to the ambient gas) is area dependent. In the proposed research, the absorption of scattered radiation by neighboring particles will be accounted for and may assist in accurately predicting the particles’ temperatures. The work will be carried out in collaboration with the Princeton Collaborative Research facility (PCRF).