Asphaltene deposition on pipeline surfaces during crude oil production and transportation is considered to be a key Flow Assurance issue. Asphaltene-metal surface interactions including the simplest process of asphaltene adsorption on metal surfaces remains a poorly understood topic. In this study, preliminary results on the kinetics and thermodynamics of asphaltene adsorption from toluene-heptane and toluene-pentane solutions are presented. The kinetics of asphaltene adsorption on gold surface was investigated using a quartz crystal microbalance in a flow-cell system. The kinetics of adsorption was relatively slow and did not achieve equilibrium even after 700 min. The asymptotic analyses indicate that the initial adsorption process is controlled by the diffusion of asphaltenes from the bulk solution to the adsorption surface. A thermodynamic framework to describe asphaltene adsorption on metal surfaces in terms of Lifshitz-van der Waal (LW) and acid-base (AB) free energy interactions is proposed. The LW and AB components of the surface tension parameters of asphaltenes and metal surfaces were determined from contact angle measurements. The free energy of asphaltene adsorption on metal surfaces in the presence of toluene was calculated. It is predicted that asphaltenes will adsorb preferentially in the following order Au > SS > Al.