Polar research vessels demand increasingly greater endurance due to their special scientific research missions. A marine plant factory solution is proposed to address the problem of vegetable shortage for long-endurance polar research vessels, ensuring continuous supply of vegetables. The applied research of plant factory technologies for polar research vessels is conducted by discussing the key technologies, environmental control requirements and type selection of marine plant factories. A design method for the plant factory on long-endurance polar research vessels is then presented to provide references for ship designers.

With more and more heated resource and rights activities in the Antarctic and Arctic regions around the world, the polar regions have become a hot spot. China’s 14th Five-year Plan and the new national polar strategy have put forward an urgent demand for new polar equipment. In this paper, the navigation of “Xuelong” and “Xuelong 2” polar icebreakers in recent years was introduced, and the urgent need to build China's polar heavy icebreakers according to the needs of China's exploration in the Antarctic and Arctic regions is put forward. In addition, the configuration characteristics of the latest power propulsion system are analyzed based on typical heavy polar icebreakers abroad, and the capacity, cold resistance capacity and power type of heavy icebreakers in China are also discussed in the paper.