Recovery of HFC-32

A method of isolating difluoromethane from a crude mixture containing HCl and an azeotropic mixture of difluoromethane and HF, which method comprises the steps of (A) distilling said crude mixture in a column with a cofeed of a compound having a boiling point higher than that of difluoromethane in order to generate a column overhead of HCl and a column bottoms whose bubble point and composition varies with the amount of heat applied to it, (B) removing HF from the column bottoms of step (A) by washing, and (C) distilling the remaining mixture from step (B) to separate difluoromethane from higher boiling compounds.