This study concerns the prediction of radiation heat transfer in evaporating water sprays for a 1D planar media. The spray evolution is described by a Lagrangian sectional approach with the initial diameter size classes defined by normal and log-normal distributions. The spray and the gas-phase radiative properties are recast in terms of cumulative distribution functions (CDF) for use with a correlated-k approach to solve the radiative transfer equation (RTE). The spectral properties required for constructing the CDFs for the droplets and gas are determined using Mie theory and the HITEMP databases, respectively. Cases are conducted to explore the sensitivity of radiative energy attenuation to time evolving droplet size distributions as a function of initial distribution, distance to the energy source, volume fraction and temperature. Results from this study show that the PDFs generate a positive skewness due to the size dependent absorption properties of the droplet. These findings suggest that the droplet size distribution can be adequately described by prescribed, non-symmetrical PDFs that are parameterized by lower order moments. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.